


One Week In The Summer

by mad_martha



Series: Auror [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-21
Updated: 2011-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 21:55:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a week before Harry's 18th birthday; one week before he leaves home, starts his training as an Auror and sets out upon a new, truly adult life. But he's just started a new and secret relationship with his best friend, his godfather wants to spend quality time with him, and on top of everything else ... Voldemort's on the move again. Why is life never simple?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Friday 24th July

"There are three rooms left," Hermione said, as they dumped their bags. She was looking frazzled but rather pleased with herself. "We thought you might want the attic room, though, Ron – it's away from everyone else. Besides," and now she lowered her voice, speaking carefully, "it's bigger than the others and it occurred to me that if - if everything sorted itself out, then the extra space might come in handy."

Ron clearly caught on straight away to what she was trying to say, but Harry was left bemused by the significant look she was giving the two of them.

"Maybe later on," Ron said wryly. "We're still working things out."

" _Still?_ Gracious, how long does it take?" Now Hermione looked exasperated.

"A while. Some of us are shy."

She harrumphed irritably and gave Harry a significant look. "Not that shy, by all accounts!"

Harry flushed with indignation. "Has Sirius told _everyone_ about that?" he demanded.

"Pretty much!" Seamus appeared in the doorway with Dean. The two of them were grinning broadly. "And we want details, man!"

"Not in this lifetime," Harry said grumpily. Even had he wanted to talk about it, he wouldn't dare; Cho would castrate him if she found out. It had been bad enough being caught _in flagrante_ by Sirius. "My God, that was a year ago! It's old news."

"Yeah, you kept that under your hat." Seamus punched his arm playfully as he passed. "Holding out on us – some friend you are!"

Harry rolled his eyes and peered up the staircase. "Okay, where are these famous rooms? My God, how many extra floors are there in here!"

"Just one," Hermione told him. "There are seven bedrooms – I thought we might need the extra space sometime. We couldn't expand it widthways in a terrace, so we went up instead."

She looked mildly pleased with herself and Harry grinned at her. "Did you help with the expansion?"

"No." She looked genuinely regretful at this. "It wouldn't have been legal. But I learned a lot from watching. They had to modify the fireplace in the living room as well, so that we could be connected to the Floo network." Her face brightened. "Come on, I'll show you both. We've all picked our rooms, but there are still three to choose from – well, two if Ron takes the attic room."

She quickly showed them around, including a tour of the kitchen, dining area, a room she had designated as the study, and then upstairs, including the bathroom, which had also been enlarged as there were six proposed occupants of the house.

"It's brilliant," Harry told her sincerely, when they were all standing on the first landing again. And it was, to him. It might have a well-worn look and be a little scantily furnished at present, but it was clean and tidy ... and a million miles away from a certain suburb of Surrey.

Hermione beamed. "Well – pick a room!"

"I already have." Harry dragged his kit-bag into the little room opposite the bathroom. It was the smallest of the rooms in the house and had a window overlooking the tiny courtyards at the rear of the terrace.

Hermione followed him inside, looking doubtful. "It's not very big, Harry."

"I know. That's why I chose it."

There was a curious silence, and when he turned around the others were all giving him odd looks – everyone except Ron, who hastily said, "Well, I'm definitely taking the attic room." And he disappeared with Seamus and Dean in his wake.

Hermione quietly closed the door behind them and turned to look at Harry gravely. "Why this room?"

He shrugged. "Because it's small. Small is what I'm used to."

"But Harry - !"

Harry grinned at her. "I'm not being weird, honestly! Being stuck in a big empty room on my own would give me the creeps, that's all. It's one thing to have four other people in there with you, like at school, but with the Dursleys I never had anything bigger than the box-room. I spent ten years under the stairs, remember? I prefer enclosed spaces."

"Hm." She didn't look convinced, but she let the matter drop and changed the subject. "How are things?"

"Oh, I'm fine."

"Did you and Ron really sort things out?"

Harry opened his mouth to reply to this, but was assaulted by a variety of images from their two-week stay in the remote highland croft. It took him a moment to gather himself enough to reply. "You could put it that way," he said finally, and felt himself turning red.

"Harry ...." Hermione looked embarrassed, but she clearly had something she wanted to get off her chest. "Harry – Ron didn't pressure you into anything, did he?"

"Eh?" That was the last thing he'd expected her to say. "No, of course not!"

"Are you sure?" She looked genuinely concerned.

"Yes, of course I'm sure. Why would you even ask?"

"Because I know you and I know Ron. He goes at things like a bull at a gate, and – "

"You think I wouldn't tell him where to get off?" Harry at once wished he'd phrased that differently, but Hermione evidently wasn't quite as dirty-minded as he was and the unintentional pun went straight over her head.

"I know the lengths you'll go to just to keep the peace with him," she corrected a little sternly. "I'd hate to think that he, well ...."

"He didn't," Harry told her firmly. "We talked and sorted stuff out. Honestly."

"And you're ... together?" she asked cautiously.

He felt himself turning scarlet again. "Yeah. You could put it like that."

"Oh. Well, that's good." Hermione nodded a little nervously, and Harry wondered why the two of them were finding it so hard to look each other in the eye. "Are you going to tell the others?" she asked.

"No!" Then, a little embarrassed at his sudden vehemence, he added in a calmer tone, "No, I don't think so. Not yet. We – we need time to get used to things ourselves first. We thought we'd keep it quiet for a while."

She looked doubtful. "Harry, if you two are ... well, if you are, you know, it's going to be difficult in a house with four other people. Especially with Ron up in the attic. I mean, Seamus and Dean aren't exactly blind, you know. And even Neville has eyes and ears."

Harry was starting to feel jumpy. He really didn't want to discuss his love life with Hermione, dearly as he loved her, and he didn't need her to remind him of his own doubts about the arrangement. While he'd been in Scotland with Ron, there had been points when he'd wished for another person whom he could confide in and ask for advice, but he was beginning to realise that Hermione was _not_ that person.

Besides, he couldn't help feeling that the urge to unburden himself to someone was irrational anyway. Harry had always relied on Harry for help with things like this; he had never felt comfortable talking about them even to Ron and Hermione. And although talking about all things hormonal had always been possible with Sirius, he didn't feel it was feasible in _this_ situation.

In fact, he was on his own in this ... on his own, but with Ron. And Harry didn't want to examine that too closely. He was anxious enough already.

"Well, I'm reliably informed that God invented privacy spells for situations like this," he told Hermione, trying to make it sound light and humorous.

She still looked doubtful, but before she could say anything more the door burst open and a grinning Seamus lurched in.

"Damn! I was sure we'd find the two of you up to something," he crowed cheerfully.

Hermione huffed irritably and Harry rolled his eyes again.

"God, Seamus, do you always think with your shorts?"

"Of course." Seamus pretended to look offended. "Someone has to state the obvious! Besides," and he waggled his brows lecherously, "someone has to protect the fair Hermione's virtue, now we all know what a randy little bugger you are."

"Yeah, yeah." Harry shoved him out of the room and glared at Ron, who was leaning against the opposite wall, laughing quietly. "Are you going to get your stuff from your Mum's?"

"Yeah, I'd better." Ron checked his watch. "Although she probably boxed it up and left it on the doorstep already. Last time I saw her, she was making plans for the extra room."

Harry didn't believe that. Mrs. Weasley was a mother to her core, and only having Ginny and Percy to fuss over in future would be a big disappointment for her.

"I'd better get my stuff from Sirius's place," he said. Not that he had much there.

"There's no rush," Hermione told him. "It's not like you can move in here until next week anyway."

There was a pause. Harry looked at her blankly. "Why not?"

"Well, you're not eighteen till then, are you?" she reminded him. "You're underage, so you'll have to stay with Sirius until your birthday. You can't start work till then either."

Stunned, he turned to look at Ron, who was also looking a little surprised. "I forgot about that. Your birthday's so late in the school year ...."

Seamus was grinning again. "No drinking, no sex – whoops, guess it's a bit late for _that_ one – no working, no Apparating and no leaving home till you're eighteen. That's wizard law. And no getting married, voting, or standing for election till you're twenty-one."

"That's ridiculous," Harry said flatly. "What the hell would I have done if I was still living with the Dursleys? They weren't about to take me back in once I finished school."

"It's academic," Hermione said with a sigh. "You have a guardian who, incidentally, wants to spend some quality time with you before he has to start ordering you around at the Auror Facility. You should be grateful. Ron and I start on Monday."

Harry let out an aggravated breath. "This is just stupid! If I was allowed to drive a car, fly my broom in public and use magic outside school at seventeen, how come I can't do anything else?"

"That's wizard law for you," Dean told him, and clapped his shoulder in a consoling kind of way.

"Damn." Harry went back into his room and picked up his bag. "Okay ... I'd better go _home_." The word was invested with a certain irony, for he had spent a grand total of two holidays – roughly nine weeks in total – at Sirius's house and it could hardly be called his home, much as Sirius himself would like it to be. In fact, Harry couldn't think of anywhere that he really considered to be his home; other than Hogwarts, and he'd just left there for good.

It was an uncomfortable idea. It had never occurred to him that he would grow up to be so rootless. In fact, instead of being all neatly arranged as he'd thought it was just after they left school, it now looked like his life was in the most spectacular mess. He had no family. He had nowhere he could seriously call home. He had no girlfriend, and in fact was embroiled in a secret gay relationship with his best friend. And he had no job for another week.

Oh – and the most evil wizard in recent history wanted him dead at the earliest possible opportunity. Better not forget _that_ little detail.

Ron and Hermione were looking at him a little anxiously, so he made an effort and gave them a feeble smile. "I'm okay," he assured them, "just a little ...."

"Pissed off?" Ron offered, and grinned back. "Come and have a look at my room before you go."

"Okay."

Harry left his bag at the top of the stairs and followed Ron up the next flight of steps, and then round the corner to a set of narrow stairs leading to the attic. One of them creaked heavily as they trod on it – "I'll have to get that fixed," Ron commented, and he cast a quick, meaningful glance at Harry.

"I don't know. Could be useful, so long as you remember which one it is."

"Hm."

Hermione was right. The attic room was a lot bigger and although it sloped significantly along the outer wall, it was easily large enough for two people sharing. And it put a little distance between Ron and everyone else in the house, which was a huge benefit to him with his rapidly developing Sight.

"What do you reckon?" he asked Harry.

"I think you're a lucky sod," Harry told him, trying to keep the comment light.

Ron nodded idly, but his eyes were studying Harry intensely. "Yeah, I tend to think that too." He pointed his wand at the door. _"Silencio!"_

"Ron ...."

"Shut up and come here a minute." When Harry didn't move, Ron stepped forward and pulled him into a rough hug.

Harry concentrated on making all his jumping muscles relax. This was nothing to do with any reluctance on his part to be hugged by Ron; it was simply an automatic reaction to _anyone_ manhandling him. It had nearly derailed their budding relationship a couple of times while they were in Scotland, but Ron was wise to it now and simply hung on to Harry until he relaxed.

"Fancy a quickie before you have to leave me on my own for a week?" he teased.

"Um ... I think since I'm underage, that might make you a pervert," Harry said into his shoulder. He wished he was taller; Ron towered over him.

Ron sniggered. "It's a bit late for that!"

"Besides, you don't have a bed in here yet."

"You like your creature comforts, don't you, mate?"

"I lived in a cupboard for ten years," Harry reminded him. Certain parts of his body were starting to get ideas about Ron now that they were in close proximity; he firmly pulled away, although not without regret. "We can still help each other move in," he said. "I just won't be able to sleep here yet."

But Ron shook his head. "See what Sirius wants to do. Hermione's right – he probably wants to spend some time with you."

And until recently Harry would have been delighted to spend time with Sirius. But now ... now, with an elephant-sized secret permanently on his mind, he wasn't so sure. Sirius was more perceptive than people gave him credit for, and if he thought Harry was worrying about something he would be relentless in his efforts to find out what it was. He took being _in loco parentis_ to his godson very seriously indeed.

"I don't know if that's a good idea. Not if we're going to keep this to ourselves."

Ron's smile slipped slightly. They had talked about this at length and they were agreed: Neither of them wanted to break the news to their families yet, nor to the wider world. This relationship was new territory for both of them, and the future was far too unpredictable for them to want to go public with it just yet. Besides, the wizarding world wasn't any more tolerant than the Muggles in that respect and they had plenty of things to worry about without wondering if they were being judged because of their sexuality.

"This is going to be difficult," Ron said quietly, making the understatement of the year.

"Yeah." Harry didn't want to think about how difficult it would be. "If we're going to keep this up, we're going to have to be really careful." He smiled a little sadly and took his wand out of his sleeve, pointing it at the door where the silencing spell was still in place. "And that means no more blatant rendezvous in the middle of the day."

He removed the silencing spell.

xXx

Stepping out of the fireplace at Sirius and Remus's house, Harry dumped his kit bag on the hearthrug and looked around. The house seemed very still.

"Sirius?" he called uncertainly. They knew he was returning from Scotland today, didn't they? "Remus? Is anyone home?"

No reply. He picked his bag up and walked out into the passage. The house definitely had an unoccupied feel to it and when he checked all the security wards were in place. Feeling a little put out, Harry dragged his bag upstairs and put it into the room he used whenever he was staying with the two men. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, at a loss. He wasn't sure why, but he had been expecting someone to be here.

The room was just the same as it had been when he last came here, back at Christmas. His school trunk had been sent on at the end of term and was under the window, but everything else – the chest of drawers, curtained bed and Quidditch pennons on the wall – looked just as they had before. Harry looked around, wondering why this place felt even less like his own than the tatty, junk-stuffed bedroom he had used at the Dursleys' house. He had been so thrilled when Sirius first brought him here, but somehow he had never been able to get comfortable.

He wondered if he would always feel like this, no matter where he lived. He wondered if he was destined to be one of those restless people who never settled anywhere and wandered the planet looking for something they couldn't name.

Of course, it didn't help that this room was just so darned _big_. Sirius had been confined to small spaces for so long in Azkaban, that they freaked him out in the same way that wide open rooms bothered Harry. Harry hadn't yet been able to bring himself to explain that to his godfather.

Cho Chang had liked the room though; probably because it was clean and neat, and totally lacked the kind of boy-clutter that made Ron's little bedroom at the Burrow so comfortable to Harry. The memory of Cho wandering the room, running her fingers lightly over the furniture, sent a shiver down his spine. That was one memory that wasn't going to fade anytime soon ... for a number of reasons.

Feeling a need to move, Harry jumped up and began to turn his stuff out of his bag. He wanted to get a shower and change his clothes, but most of the gear in his bag needed washing. Wondering if he had anything fit to wear in the house, he pulled open the top drawer in the chest by the bed. And blinked.

Wow. He had _stacks_ of clothes. And most of them he definitely didn't recognise.

It didn't take a genius to work out where they had come from either. One of the many things Sirius had ranted about as soon as he had Harry under his guardianship was the state of the clothes he was wearing, which was understandable for he had still been wearing his cousin Dudley's cast-offs at that point. By the time he'd gone back to school at the end of that summer, he'd had more new clothes than he thought he could wear – clothes that fitted, that were even stylish and made him look less like a pauper's child. For once, he'd actually garnered some serious interest from the girls (a detail which had really enraged Ron).

The whole clothing issue apparently still rankled with Sirius, though, because the drawers and closet were filled with new clothes in Harry's size. Delighted, Harry pulled out some jeans, a t-shirt and underwear, and grabbed a towel and headed for the bathroom.

He was towelling his hair dry afterwards when he heard the sound of someone arriving via the Floo. He walked out onto the landing just in time to see Remus Lupin walking down the passage.

Lupin beamed when he saw Harry running down the stairs. "I wondered who was here! You got back alright, then?"

"Yeah – we decided to take the Muggle train to Sheffield and use the nearest public Floo point to London from there. I thought I'd never stop Ron bouncing around the carriage, though."

Lupin laughed and opened his arms, and Harry stepped into the hug, surprised but pleased at the unexpected greeting.

"You've been to London already?" Lupin released him almost immediately (he was more sensitive than Sirius to Harry's jumpiness) and led the way into the kitchen, where he put a kettle on the hob.

"Well, yeah. We wanted to see what Hermione had done with the house." Harry fidgeted for a second. "I didn't know I wouldn't be able to move in there until next week." He hoped his voice didn't sound as aggrieved as he thought it did.

But the older man chuckled. "Yes ... we weren't sure if you knew about that and Sirius decided not to say anything before you went away. You can't start work until next week either, did you know?"

"I do now," Harry grumbled. "Apparently there's a lot of things I can't do until next week."

"Some of which have already gone by the board," Lupin reminded him, with an irrepressible quirk of his brows.

 _Have they ever_ , Harry thought, but didn't say it. It suddenly occurred to him that he was already on his third sexual partner and still underage. _Better hope Seamus doesn't find out about that._ "Has Sirius been on a shopping spree for me?" he asked instead. "I seem to have a lot more clothes."

"That was last week," Lupin replied, surveying Harry's garb critically. "Brace yourself, because I don't think he totally got it out of his system. It's a nest-building instinct, I'm sure. He's been overcome by a primitive need to provide for you."

Remus had a wonderful, dry sense of humour. Harry sniggered. "Do you reckon I can get a new broom out of him on the strength of it?"

"Possibly, but I'm relying on you to exercise some restraint – God knows, he doesn't possess any." Lupin poured boiling water into the teapot. "So, tell me all about Scotland. Sirius was convinced you and Ron were getting up to something you shouldn't, because he couldn't imagine the pair of you just _hiking_ for a fortnight."

Harry was momentarily struck mute by this. It hadn't occurred to him that anyone would question their excuse, since backpacking around was a big thing with Muggle teenagers when they left school and he'd assumed wizards did the same. Besides, they had spent _some_ of their time hiking ....

Lupin glanced at him. "Well, you know Sirius. If you're getting up to anything illicit, he'll probably want to join in."

Unfortunately for Harry, this image just made his mind boggle even more.

Lupin saw his expression and began to laugh. "Tell you what – how about we just skip the whole subject of Scotland and talk about the weather?"

Harry grinned weakly and punched his arm gently. "We _were_ hiking! God, what does Sirius think we were getting up to?"

"Probably something involving girls and debauchery since, you know, that was exactly what he did when we finished school."

"I can imagine." Harry shuddered exaggeratedly. He accepted a mug of tea from the other man and followed him into the living room.

Fortunately, since he and Ron really had done some hiking he had plenty to tell Lupin about lochs and Stone Age remains. It had been a good holiday, actually, even though at times neither of them could decide whether it was a good or bad thing that Hermione wasn't there with them. Her company had been missed, although, as Ron wryly pointed out, her probable lectures on the archaeology hadn't. And they definitely hadn't needed her input on the 'other' issue.

"Well, you're looking better for the break," Lupin commented at length. "You were starting to look a bit stressed at the leaving feast – personally, I was glad to hear you were planning to take off for a while. You definitely needed it."

Privately, Harry wasn't so sure about that. Yes, the holiday had been good for both him and Ron, and they'd had the opportunity to sort out some pressing issues that needed to be faced up to. But now he was wondering if they hadn't simply unlocked a bigger trunk full of problems.

But he couldn't discuss that with Lupin, much as he wished he could. Over the past few years, Harry had got to know the man a lot better, but at the end of the day he still wasn't as close to him as he was with Sirius. And discussing something so terribly personal and tricky was definitely out of the question – with either of them.

"So where is Sirius?" he asked, changing the subject.

"At a meeting with the Minister." Lupin looked amused for a moment. "I managed to get out of that one for once, but he'll be home for dinner. Will you stay?"

His tone was quite casual, but Harry felt a prickle of guilt. Hermione was right, it wasn't so much to ask of him that he spend a little time with the two men who were the closest thing he had to a real family. Both of them had expended considerable time and energy on ensuring that he reached the adulthood he was so desperate to assert, and all he could do was complain that he had to wait another week for his independence. So he said "Of course!" to the offer of dinner and he even offered to help prepare it.

And he tried not to spend the next couple of hours wondering what Ron was up to.

xXx

Sirius, in typical Sirius-fashion, all but exploded out of the Floo in a cloud of soot just as Lupin was turning chicken breasts under the grill and Harry tossing a salad. They had heard his outraged swearing even before he appeared ("That's the problem with these Muggle-made chimneys," Lupin observed. "Thin brickwork."), and it only got louder as he stood in the grate and slapped at the dust on his robes.

"Remus, I swear one day I'm going to tell Moody where he can stuff his job and take up parrot-breeding in the Azores!" he roared. "Two hours that little upstart in Fudge's office kept me kicking my heels. _Two hours!_ And then Fudge himself had the brass-faced nerve to ask why I was so late – "

"Parrot-breeding?" Harry asked, popping his head around the door.

Sirius's scowl vanished in a flash, to be replaced by a huge grin. "Harry!"

"Hi Sirius – _oof._ "

He was seized and dragged into a manly, backslapping hug. Sometimes Sirius was so overwhelming, all noise and energy and rapid mood swings. Harry couldn't imagine how his father and Lupin had coped with it through seven years of school. Especially when he would suddenly do something unexpectedly perceptive like –

Sirius released Harry and held him at arm's length for a moment, scanning his face searchingly. "Are you alright?"

\- Something like _that_.

"I'm fine! Why wouldn't I be?" It didn't take any effort at all to produce a grin – Sirius had a large smudge of soot down the middle of his face that gave him a clownish look. Like Harry, he never seemed to come through the Floo network unscathed.

"Hm." His godfather didn't seem entirely convinced, but he let the matter go for the time being.

"Sirius, for heaven's sake, get washed," Lupin urged. "I'm dishing the dinner up now. You can talk to Harry then."

"Oh, right. Be back in a minute." And with a quick ruffle of Harry's hair, which his godson indignantly protested, he was gone, thundering up the stairs two at a time.

"Bang go any hopes of a quiet evening," Lupin commented dryly. "Harry, will you bring the plates, please?"

"Has he always been like this?" Harry asked curiously, as he grabbed a teacloth and picked up the warmed dishes.

"Oh yes. Although he was worse at school." Lupin paused as he drained the potatoes and transferred them to a bowl. "At least these days he _can_ keep still if he wants to, but he was a nightmare to sit next to in class. Always on the fidget. He's still like that in meetings sometimes, and even Dumbledore threatened to hex him once if he didn't stop bouncing around."

Dinner was a livelier meal than Harry would have liked. Sirius's first question was a demand to know precisely what Harry and Ron had been up to while they'd been away. Resigned to this, Harry gave him the same details he'd trotted out for Lupin. Unlike Lupin, Sirius heard him out and gave him a thoroughly disbelieving look.

"So you want me to believe that the pair of you ditched Hermione just so that you could spend two whole weeks admiring ancient architecture and the beauties of endless heather?"

"That's right," Harry agreed weakly. Put like that, it did sound a little unlikely, even though to a certain extent it was true.

Sirius's face cracked into a broad grin. "Hogwash! What were you really up to?"

Harry looked helplessly at Lupin for support, only to find the other man laughing quietly. "Don't look at me!" he chuckled. "You've only got yourself to blame for this one!"

"Eh?"

"Well, we know what you're like with the ladies," Sirius clarified.

Harry put his fork down and slumped back in his chair, quite put out. "Are you never going to let me forget that?"

"Nope." Sirius munched cheerfully on his salad, enjoying his godson's embarrassment. "I only wish I'd had a camera. Your face!"

Harry could feel his face burning up now, but rallied enough to retort, "I didn't think it was my _face_ you got a clear look at!"

He had the satisfaction of seeing Sirius nearly choke as he tried to swallow and laugh at the same time.

"Alright, alright – enough!" Lupin broke in, although he was laughing too. "Sirius, let it drop! Whatever they got up to is none of your business."

"I think I have a right to know what I'm going to be arrested for!" Sirius protested. "I'm responsible for him for another week!"

"Ha!" Harry defiantly speared another potato. "Like you could stop me doing stuff!"

"Have a little respect for your elders, shorty!"

"Hey! Who are you calling shorty?"

"Enough already!" Lupin said, amused. "Sirius, stop teasing and tell him what you've been plotting for his birthday."

His birthday? Harry blanked for a second at the sudden change of subject, then remembered. Oh yeah. Friday. Eighteen years old and free to do what he liked ... provided it didn't include voting, getting married or standing for election. Having no great ambition to do any of those things, he looked eagerly at his godfather.

"Does this mean I get a party?" He'd had a sort-of birthday party the year before, of course, but that hadn't been as much fun because he and Ron hadn't been on speaking terms and most of his other school friends had been out of touch. Plus, Sirius had been so involved in the wrangling over his taking legal guardianship of Harry that he hadn't had much time to prepare.

"Florean Fortescue has offered his restaurant to us for a private party on the thirty-first," Sirius told him, "which is great, but we need to get owling people if you're going to have any guests. I've sounded out a lot of people to make sure they're free on the night, but that doesn't get you out of helping me to write proper invitations tomorrow."

"Cool!" Harry grinned. "Did Hermione help you with the sounding-out?"

The two men chuckled.

"Did she ever!" Sirius said, rolling his eyes.

"That girl has amazing energy," Lupin commented. "I'm told she harassed the Floo Regulation team for two days until they agreed to jump the student house to the top of their queue. And then she stood over them while they did the work."

"She was probably trying to find out how they did it," Harry observed, helping himself to more coleslaw.

"I'm surprised she didn't go hiking with you though," Sirius put in nonchalantly.

Harry felt himself turning crimson once more at the idea. "Oh, she didn't want to go," he managed. And wasn't _that_ the truth.

"I'll bet."

Harry managed to get a grip on himself. "Shut up, Sirius!"

His godfather sniggered.

And then it happened. Harry felt something odd – a curious feeling, like warm breath passing over the nape of his neck. A reflexive shudder ran up his spine; the sensation was almost erotic, but not in a pleasant way.

His scar exploded into white-hot, blinding pain.

It happened so fast, with so little warning, that he nearly screamed. He clapped his hands to his forehead, and was just barely aware that he'd thrown himself out of his chair, that Sirius and Remus were trying frantically to help him. But the pain kept increasing to a point where he knew that he _was_ screaming and couldn't stop himself.

He must have passed out then, for the next thing he was aware of was lying on the floor, cradled in Sirius's arms. The pain had receded to a dull ache in his scar, but he was bathed in cold sweat and trembling spasmodically. The room felt unnaturally cold, despite a blanket that someone had draped around him, and he could hear a number of hushed voices nearby.

He tried to move and found that he was a weak as a kitten. "Sirius?"

"Easy ...." His godfather leaned over him, and Harry could see that although he was trying to look calm, he was deeply shaken. "How are you feeling?"

"Like crap," he mumbled.

In the background he heard Lupin say "I think he's back with us" and another familiar voice from somewhere behind Harry said "Let's try and sit him up, shall we?"

It was a mistake. No sooner had Sirius tipped him up into a sitting position than Harry's stomach rebelled and his dinner promptly made a reappearance. Fortunately Lupin had anticipated something of the sort and shoved a large bowl into place. Harry retched helplessly and felt more miserable than he could remember in a long time. He couldn't even support himself as he leaned over the bowl but had to rely on Sirius, who took all of his weight and murmured soothingly as he emptied the entire contents of his stomach and then some. He felt so helpless that he experienced a strong urge to weep. It would, he dimly felt, be a fitting cap on such a pathetic performance.

At length the spasms stopped and the room ceased its lazy spinning. There was a brief conference over his head, and Sirius and Lupin helped him to his feet and over to a couch. He was finally able to see who else was in the room, and was only mildly surprised to see Dumbledore and Mad-Eye Moody.

Dumbledore bent over him at once, taking his pulse. "How do you feel now, my boy?"

"Like hell," Harry murmured, too wrung out to be anything other than utterly frank.

"Indeed. This, I believe, is one of the worst attacks you have suffered in the last three years, no?"

He nodded wearily. Dumbledore referred to the horrors of his fifth year at school, just after Voldemort had risen again. That year had been a nightmare, Harry suffering the backlash of every attack Voldemort made upon the former followers he was hunting down, one by one.

Leaning back into the sofa cushions, Harry spared a moment to be grateful that he wasn't, after all, at the student house with the others. These attacks he suffered when Voldemort vented his rage on someone were frightening enough for Sirius and Remus to witness; it was worse for someone like Ron or Hermione, who was even more helpless to do anything.

Then he wondered, horribly, if this was the beginning of another phase of Voldemort's campaign. He hadn't experienced anything like this attack in over eighteen months, but this could signal a change in the Dark wizard's strategy. Which could mean more attacks for Harry. He felt like a coward admitting it even to himself, but the thought terrified him. He could collapse like this anywhere, anytime, just as he had at school and most people weren't very helpful or understanding. Draco Malfoy, for example, had made capital out of the fear Harry's fits had generated among the other pupils.

A gentle touch on his arm; Dumbledore again. "I don't suppose you received any impressions of what our old friend was doing this time?"

Harry thought about it, but shook his head slightly. "No, Professor. I'm sorry. It was just too painful - "

"My dear boy, you have no reason to apologise. Doubtless we will find out soon enough what caused this." There was a grim note in the elderly professor's voice as he said this, but his eyes, studying Harry's pale, sweaty face, were kindly. "I would suggest you take a potion to settle your stomach and help you relax, and go to bed. You should feel more the thing in the morning."

It was a suggestion Harry was only too willing to accept. With Sirius's assistance, he climbed the stairs to his room, undressed and crawled between the sheets. A short while later Lupin brought him a potion that he drank without question.

And then, quite without expecting to, he slipped into sleep.

xXx

He awoke in the early hours of the morning, fighting to escape a crippling nightmare that fled almost as soon as he opened his eyes. This was not unexpected; the attacks Harry suffered followed a pattern, of which the nightmares – usually followed by a dull, persistent ache in his scar – were a part.

He lay awake for a while; then, realising that he wasn't likely to go back to sleep anytime soon, he decided to get up. His bedroom was stuffy with the summer heat anyway and it would be cooler downstairs.

Harry tried to be quiet as he got himself a drink in the kitchen, but when he turned to walk through to the living room he found Sirius standing in the doorway.

"Are you all right?" his godfather wanted to know.

He nodded wearily. "I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep."

"Nightmare?" Sirius was only too familiar with Harry's attacks.

"Yeah." Harry rubbed at his scar absently. "I was going to, you know, hang around down here for a while. I'll be alright though – you don't have to stay up."

"I wasn't asleep."

They slumped on the living room sofa together and Sirius slung a companionable arm around Harry's shoulders. For once, Harry didn't stiffen at the touch but instead leaned into the embrace. He felt empty and depressed, and a small corner of him that he didn't want to acknowledge was frightened. It had been over eighteen months since he'd had an attack that bad, and since then Voldemort seemed almost to have gone into hibernation. Death Eater activity was small scale and low-key, enough that the Ministry was still able to claim it was caused by ordinary troublemakers.

Much to Harry's own dismay and fury, he had once or twice been branded one of their number – "an hysterical child" seeking attention and creating mischief.

Now there was the possibility that Voldemort was scaling up his campaign again – with all that implied for Harry, and just at a moment when Harry himself could have done without the added distraction.

"I found some stuff the other day that I thought might interest you," Sirius said unexpectedly.

"Yeah?"

"Hang on, I'll get it – " The older man got up and disappeared out of the room, and when he returned he was carrying a small box and a fat brown envelope. "Your leaving photos have arrived." He tossed the envelope into Harry's lap. "The official ones and the ones I took. Have a look."

Diverted, Harry pulled the stack of photos from the envelope and began sorting through them. The official ones were much as he'd expected – formally posed and rather elegant. Consequently he didn't think they looked much like him, although the year photo including all the teachers looked livelier.

The best one of all – though for all the wrong reasons – was one of the Quidditch team photos. Harry had been captain before he left school, and had been delighted to carry off the Quidditch Cup in the final game of the season. Consequently, there was a picture of him with Dumbledore and the opposing team captain – Draco Malfoy. Dumbledore had made them shake hands and swap robes, as was traditional, and so Harry for the first and last time in his school career was wearing Slytherin green, while Draco wore the Gryffindor scarlet. The Slytherin captain looked absolutely furious in the photo, while Harry himself was grinning rather smugly.

Sirius's photos were better; warmer and more personal. Harry was particularly caught by one of him, Hermione and Ron, the three of them standing with their arms around each other, laughing at something Sirius had said. A nearly identical shot, but with Seamus leaping up and down in the background pulling faces, made him grin. And another one, taken by Lupin, of him and Sirius standing together outside the doors of the Great Hall was also good.

Others were more puzzling. For the life of him Harry couldn't remember the scene in one of them, where he was standing talking to Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall with a curiously intent and serious expression. With his formal robes and wizard's cap – worn for the little afternoon ceremony where leavers received their NEWTs certificates – he looked ten years older, which was a weird thing to look at.

"I don't remember you taking this."

"I don't think I did – it must have been Remus." Sirius studied the picture over his shoulder. "And I certainly didn't take _that_ one. Why were you talking to Snape?"

"God knows – I don't remember it at all."

"What was he saying to you?"

"I don't know." Harry grinned in spite of himself. "Probably "good riddance"."

"Slimy git."

Harry turned the photos over until he unexpectedly came to one of just him and Ron. His stomach tightened at once, for wizard photos were notorious for recreating the emotion of the moment. But to his relief – and a touch of disappointment – the pair of them were just laughing and jostling each other in the picture. He watched it for a moment until Sirius's voice broke into his reverie.

"The _Daily Prophet_ 's been sniffing around all week, hoping to get some kind of scoop on you since it's your birthday shortly. They've already done one piece about you leaving school. With photos, I might add, good ones. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the Creevey kid sold them some of his work."

Harry sighed and put the pictures down. "I wish they'd leave me alone."

"Not a hope. It's your eighteenth birthday – they're going to be wetting themselves trying to find out what you plan to do with your life."

"When they find out, perhaps they could tell me," was Harry's rather sour reply.

Sirius shot him a look at this, but didn't say anything. Instead, he dumped the box onto the sofa between them. "Have a look at these."

"What are they?" It looked like photograph albums; a stack of them, old and faded.

"I've slowly been getting some of my stuff back," Sirius explained. "Things that landed up in storage mostly, after I was sent to Azkaban, and a few bits and pieces that old friends were already keeping for me. Most of it's gone forever, of course," he added matter-of-factly, "but this lot turned up in a crate in the Evidence Store at the Auror Facility a couple of weeks ago. Remus found them. There was other stuff as well – clothes mostly, which you can have a good laugh at if you like, before I burn them."

"How did that end up in the evidence store?" Harry asked, surprised.

There was a pause. Then his godfather said, with studied nonchalance: "My family refused to accept delivery of my things when the Aurors sent it all to them. So it was all just returned and shoved on a shelf."

Harry really wished he'd kept his mouth shut. He already knew (because Remus had told him) that Sirius's family had disowned him after his trial and that, despite his exoneration, they still refused to acknowledge him. Apparently his relationship with his father, in particular, had always been strained and the shame of having a son in Azkaban, guilty or not, had been the last straw.

"Anyway," Sirius continued briskly, "I found these and I thought you might like to see them. I'm sure that aunt and uncle of yours didn't have anything worthwhile ...."

He passed the first of the albums to Harry, who slowly opened it, unsure of what he would see. To his surprise it was a collection of old school photographs, both in black and white and in colour, of his father, Sirius, Remus and a fourth boy who could only be Peter Pettigrew. They all looked incredibly young.

"I've got two or three albums full of pictures from when we were at school," Sirius said in answer to the unspoken question. "Those are the oldest – they must be from our second year, since we didn't really get pally until the end of the first year. … That's the Quidditch team. Your dad was picked in the second year."

"Weren't you on the team too?" Harry smiled at the image of his father, togged up in the red and gold Quidditch robes, waving madly from his broom. The picture seemed to have been taken from high up in one of the stands around the pitch.

"On and off. McGonagall kept suspending me when I got into trouble."

Harry broke off his examination of the pictures to eye his godfather suspiciously. Sirius sounded _way_ too cheerful about this. "What did you do?"

"Oh … nothing."

"Yeah, right!" He had probably been downright wicked, judging by his saintly expression. The reputation of the Marauders had impressed even Fred and George Weasley, so Harry had no hesitation in imagining the worst.

He turned the page over. "Oh my God. I don't even want to _ask_ what you were doing here. And I can't believe you took photos …."

They spent the next couple of hours going through the albums, with Sirius giving appropriate commentary. At one point there was a whole slew of pictures of Harry's mother, most of them displaying her penchant for startlingly short skirts.

"Didn't she ever wear anything a bit more … concealing?" Harry demanded at one point.

Sirius sniggered. "All the girls wore miniskirts then! Don't be a prude – "

"Sirius, this is my _mother_!"

"Yeah. She had great legs."

This comment had an odd note of wistfulness in it that brought Harry up short. It had never occurred to him before to wonder what effect his mother's relationship with his father had had upon the other Marauders, but it almost sounded like … well, like _Sirius_ had been attracted to her too. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, but he caught himself just in time. Questions like that were better asked of Remus Lupin, rather than embarrassing Sirius. Not that Harry was fundamentally opposed to embarrassing Sirius, if the occasion called for it, but there were some subjects that would embarrass him just as much, and he instinctively knew that this was one of them.

"Anyway," Harry continued after a moment, "there is _no_ excuse for the trousers you're wearing in that photo ... or that sweater."

"Thank you, Madam Malkin's love-child! Besides, if you think that's bad, take a look at what your dad's wearing in the next picture."

"God, that's an ugly formal robe."

"They were really fashionable at the time."

"That explains why everyone in the picture's wearing them, I suppose."

Harry continued turning the leaves of the album.

"Is that Snape?" he asked at one point, pointing to a figure in the background of one photo.

Sirius peered at it and his face curled into a sneer. "Yep. Greasy little brat, wasn't he?"

Harry squinted at the picture. "Why's he talking to my mum?"

"'Cause he was a smarmy little git, always sidling up to the girls and making comments."

Harry watched in mild surprise as his father in the photo walked up to his mother and diverted her attention from whatever Snape was saying to her. Lily Evans tucked her hand into James Potter's and walked away, leaving Snape to glare after them with an expression of bitter loathing.

"Weird," he murmured.

"Oh, he was always doing things like that." Sirius reached over and quietly turned the page. "You're nearly at the end of this one. Do you want to keep going? I think there are some wedding photos in the next one."

Harry stifled a yawn. He _was_ tired, but he didn't want to go back to bed. The nightmares would still be waiting for him there.

"No, I want to see them."

Sirius nodded and made no comment, even when Harry's weight against his shoulder grew heavier and heavier and the boy's voice began to slur with exhaustion.


	2. Saturday 25th July

When he awoke, Harry discovered that he was stretched out across a sofa that was twice its original size. Someone had covered him with a light blanket and there was a big, squashy pillow under his head. It was also daylight, and there was a lingering whiff of fried bacon in the air.

Someone appeared in his field of vision and put a mug of hot tea on the coffee table. Sirius.

"Are you awake?"

"I am now." Harry sat up slowly, feeling very groggy. "What time is it?"

"Ten o'clock." Sirius sat down in the chair opposite, grinning at his godson's expression. "I let you sleep – you probably needed it. We were up till nearly four o'clock, you know."

"Sorry – "

"Don't be. Do you fancy some breakfast?"

Harry thought about it, and shook his head. "Not right now, thanks."

"How are you feeling this morning?"

"Just dopey." Harry paused and gingerly touched his scar. The skin was smooth but tender. "Aches …." He changed the subject. "Where's Remus?"

"He left for work a couple of hours ago." Sirius propped his feet up on the coffee table and sipped at his tea. "I've got the week off, though. I thought if you were game, we could do some stuff together. What do you say?"

Only yesterday Harry would have been reluctant, but today the idea was one hundred percent more appealing. After all, it wasn't like there was much he could be doing otherwise. It was Saturday – on Monday, Ron and Hermione would both be working, leaving him on his own anyway. And he hadn't really spent all that much time with Sirius since the older man had been exonerated at his second trial.

"Okay."

Sirius nodded. "We need to do those party invites first though. Let me get my list and you can tell me if there's anyone you want added or taken off."

They agreed the list, then Harry helped write out the invitations. Hedwig and Sirius's owl, Loki, were sent off with some of them, and the rest they bundled up to take to the Owl Post Office in Diagon Alley.

The Alley was bustling with people by the time they arrived. They posted the invitations, then Sirius took Harry for an early lunch in the Leaky Cauldron. After that, they paid a visit to Madam Fortunea's Emporium of Fine Cakes and Gateaux to order a suitable birthday cake – "Something big and gooey" was Sirius's suggestion. Harry had no argument with this, although it took a very long time to decide on flavours, fillings and toppings. The possibilities seemed endless, as Madam Fortunea's shop was filled with nothing but barrel upon barrel of delicious ingredients, and the proprietress was keen to press samples upon them before they came to a decision.

The next stop was Florean Fortescue's, to finalise the details of the party itself. The owner didn't hire out his restaurant to just anyone for private parties; it was a measure of his affection for Harry that he was absolutely begging for the opportunity, and Harry was warmed by his assurances that this would be "the party of the year!" for the teenager. He was starting to feel a ridiculously childish excitement about his birthday.

Leaving Fortescue's, they paused outside the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies (so that Harry could pay homage to the latest edition of the Firebolt). It was while they were standing there, arguing heatedly over the rival merits of the Firebolt and Comet 2000, that Harry was nearly bowled over by a sudden slap on the back.

"There you are!" Ron said cheerfully. "I've been looking all over for you – Fred swore he saw you going into Madam Fortunea's. Are you busy?"

"Not right now," Harry said, with a quick glance at Sirius for confirmation. "Why, what's up?"

"Got to buy some furniture," the redhead explained. "Mum said if I want to move out so soon, I can just buy my own." He rolled his eyes. "I'm not letting that stop me. She said the same thing to Percy, so he didn't move out … no way am I staying under the same roof as him any longer than I have to."

Sirius grinned at this. "What's your budget?" he asked.

Ron's face screwed up a little. "Fred and George are lending me ten Galleons."

To his credit, Sirius didn't blink. "There's a good second-hand place behind Ollivanders," he suggested. "In fact, you're going to need some furniture too, for next week," he said to Harry. "We might as well get yours there as well."

Ron relaxed a little at this tactful statement, and nodded to Harry. "Sounds good."

The shop in question was more like a warehouse, stacked floor to ceiling with everything from lamp-stands to conference tables. There was the usual variation in condition; some of the goods, especially those near the doors, were cheap and very battered but others were nearly new and there was a broad spectrum in between the two. Finding the good-but-reasonably-priced took time and agility, as the walkways between piles were narrow and full of sticking-out legs and handles.

"What do you reckon to this?" Ron asked Harry at one point. He was looking at a large, sleigh-shaped bed.

"It's a bit big, isn't it?"

"I don't want a single. I might have company."

Harry really wished he wouldn't make comments like that where Sirius could overhear. To hide a sudden red face, he pretended to examine the bed from all sides, which involved moving a table and vaulting over a cedar blanket chest.

"Something's chewed it on this side – crikey, I don't know what it was, but it must have been _huge_."

"That's a pity." Ron reluctantly abandoned the bed. "This is a good chest of drawers, though …."

They kept looking. Sirius clearly had more experience than the two teenagers, for he helped Harry find a sturdy pine bedstead and clothing chest in no time at all. Finally, Ron settled (with a surreptitious wink at Harry) on a large four-poster bed, the aforementioned chest of drawers and a bookcase. After some extensive haggling, they departed the warehouse and strolled back up Diagon Alley to the Ministry building, where they met up with Remus Lupin, who was just finishing work, and went into the Leaky Cauldron for dinner.

"So what have you been up to?" Ron asked over dessert, while Sirius and Lupin were chatting about something else.

"Oh ... this and that." Harry wasn't sure why, but he didn't want to tell Ron about the incident the night before with his scar. "Sirius is arranging a birthday party for me."

Ron's freckled face creased into a grin. "I know! Hedwig brought everyone's invitations just before I left this morning. Sounds like it's going to be quite a bash."

"It will be if Sirius gets his way."

There was a pause. Harry moodily prodded his ice cream with his spoon, aware that Sirius was watching them both. Then his godfather leaned forward and gave Ron an evil smile.

"So ..." he drawled. "I'm not buying this hiking story. Just what _did_ the two of you get up to in Scotland?"

Much to Harry's satisfaction, Ron was caught like a deer in the headlights of a train by this unexpected question. He leaned back in his chair and prepared to enjoy Ron's stammering, guilty response.

xXx

After everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, Harry felt that he should have been exhausted that evening. Or even just a little bit tired.

Instead he was restless and jumpy. He wandered the garden for a while, feeling hemmed in by Sirius and Remus's quiet insistence that he shouldn't go outside the protective wards, then finally came in at his godfather's request only to pace around the house like a caged animal. He was filled with a nagging tension that was becoming embarrassingly familiar, and finally he gave way to it and went to his room to fetch a robe.

"I'm going to nip over and see the others," he muttered to the two men as he shrugged himself into the garment. "Is that okay? I might be back a bit late."

"Just be careful," Sirius told him, looking up from his magazine with a faint smile. "And don't forget that it's a full moon tonight."

"Of course." Harry flicked his wand at the fireplace and flames burst into life. He took a pinch of Floo powder from the jar on the mantelpiece.

"Oh, and Harry?"

He paused, looking back. "Yeah?"

"If you get into any trouble, let me know so I can come and bail you out."

Harry felt his face flame. "I'm not going to get into any trouble!" he protested. "I'm just going to see Ron!"

Sirius's laughter followed him up the chimney.

xXx

"You really shouldn't tease him," Lupin chided his friend, shaking his head.

Sirius chuckled. "But it's so much fun! He looks just like James used to when he was sneaking off to see Lily. Which makes me wonder what he's really up to."

Lupin gave him a thoughtful look for a moment. "Just bear in mind that he _isn't_ James, and there's over twenty years' difference between a best friend and a godfather. Harry's very good-natured, but he isn't used to having a father figure overseeing what he does all the time. You don't want to make him kick over the traces with you the way he started to with Vernon Dursley."

Sirius snorted his contempt of Harry's uncle. "I can do a bit better than that half-witted baboon! I just …." He looked wistful for a moment. "I hope Harry knows he can talk to me."

"He knows," Lupin said gently. "But you have to remember that talking to people about his problems is another thing he's not used to. We had this conversation a couple of years ago, remember? I imagine it's a little like the way he pulls away when people touch him."

The other man looked pained. For someone who was as hands-on in his affection as Sirius, Harry's flinching from physical contact was distressing.

"He's getting better," he pointed out, although more to convince himself than Lupin.

"Yes, he is, but it's still a conscious effort on his part." Lupin sighed and put his book to one side. "Just ... don't try to force him into anything, Sirius. Don't push. If he wants to talk to you, then he'll talk. If he doesn't want to – well, that's his right."

xXx

The house was surprisingly quiet when Harry fell out of the living room fireplace. He picked himself up, swearing irritably – getting his Apparition licence was on the top of his list of things to do on his birthday – and walked out into the passage.

Someone was humming in the kitchen, and when he walked in he discovered that it was Hermione. She was putting together a sandwich, a multi-layered construction of crusty white bread, ham and salad that required two wooden cocktail sticks to hold it together. Harry was amused by the look of intense concentration on her face as she did it; like everything in her life, she gave it her all, even though it was just a humble snack.

"Are you going to eat that or display it in the Tate Modern?" he asked.

She looked up, quite unsurprised to see him standing there in the kitchen doorway. "I wondered when you'd turn up," she said, with a curious little half-smile. There was a pause as she topped the cocktail sticks with a couple of cherry tomatoes, then she continued, "He's up in his room. The others have gone out to the Leaky Cauldron."

"Oh."

"Seamus thinks I'm stopping in with Ron for an evening of debauchery," Hermione added. "Which, of course, I am – though not with _Ron_ , admittedly." She picked up the plate and flicked her wand at two tall glasses and a jug of lemonade, which obediently followed her to the door.

"You are?" Harry looked at her, perplexed.

"Yes. I have a guest."

"Who?" Harry asked, as he followed her to the stairs.

She chuckled. "That's for me to know and you to find out! I ask only one small favour, Harry – use a privacy spell?"

For the second time in less than an hour Harry felt his face heat up uncomfortably.

"I wasn't – I mean, I don't think ...." he stammered.

"Seamus forgot last night," Hermione told him matter-of-factly, "and we all had to put up with ... what he was doing. If you're hoping to keep this quiet, you need to be careful."

She left him standing on the first landing as she continued up the next flight of stairs to her room. After a moment of confusion and anxiety, Harry turned and walked down the passage to his own room.

Hermione had been busy again. His name was on the door, etched onto a neat brass plaque, and when he went inside the furniture he and Sirius had bought earlier in the day had been delivered and was already in place, awaiting his eventual arrival. Shaking his head at his friend's efficiency, Harry shut the door again and continued up the stairs to the attic room.

Ron had clearly also been busy. Harry was interested to note that one of the steps in the final flight of stairs now bore a discreet blob of white paint just off-centre, as though it had been accidentally spilt there. The mark had not been there the day before. Cautiously he trod on it and the step creaked, confirming his suspicions. He was willing to bet that the paint glowed in the dark as well, as an additional reminder.

He tapped on the door and pushed it open, feeling ridiculously nervous.

Ron had got all of his new furniture into place, although there were still a few boxes of possessions pushed up against the wall, awaiting attention. He was making the bed up when Harry walked in, stretching across the mattress to smooth and tuck blue cotton sheets. There were no curtains to hang from the canopy yet, but it looked quite comfortable in spite of that.

Ron looked up from his endeavours and grinned.

"Hey! About time you turned up – I thought you were going to be a no-show after all."

Harry was irrationally nettled by this, especially after the phrasing of Hermione's welcome and Sirius's casual assumption that he was going out for a wild night with someone. Not, of course, that a wild night wasn't _exactly_ what he'd come here for, although he hadn't actually put the impulse into words, even in the privacy of his own mind.

"I wasn't aware we had a fixed arrangement," he muttered.

Ron gave him a startled look. "I know we didn't! But I was seeing you in plates and saucepans all evening while I was helping Hermione – "

 _"Saucepans?"_

"Yeah." The redhead finished tossing a knitted comforter across the end of the bed and brushed his hands on the seat of his jeans. "I think my range is lengthening _again_." He gave the word a weary emphasis. "Anything shiny and I can get an image off it right now. It's a nuisance more than anything."

"Headaches?" Harry was instantly concerned, for using the Sight gave Ron chronic migraines.

"Nah, but it does make my eyes water. Doesn't matter though." Ron eyed him for a moment, taking in Harry's uncomfortable posture. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Harry hunched his shoulders and dug his hands into his pockets.

There was a pause. Ron looked at Harry and Harry looked anywhere but at Ron. Finally Ron sighed and reached out, grabbing Harry's arm.

"Come here, you prat ...." He pulled him into a hug.

Every muscle seemed to lock up and Harry stood there stiffly for a moment, unsure of what to do with his hands and swearing at himself silently. This was ridiculous. They'd spent the past two weeks doing little but pounce on each other every five minutes, and _now_ he was acting like a forty-year-old virgin?

Then Ron gently rubbed his back and the stiffness began to melt away. Slowly, cautiously, Harry slid his arms around Ron's back, leaning his forehead against the taller youth's shoulder and breathing slowly, deeply. This was ... nice.

His senses perked up and informed him politely that not only was Ron as warm as toast but he also smelled _really_ good – a mixture of the bitter sweetness of chocolate and an all-male muskiness. Then another part of his body entirely thanked his senses for the information and put him on notice that it expected him to act upon it.

Damn.

Ron chuckled roughly. "Seamus was right – you _are_ a randy little bugger!"

"Oh, and you're not?" Harry tried to pull away, but Ron was having none of that.

"I've never tried to deny it!"

The kiss that followed was almost bruisingly hard – not that Harry was complaining. In many ways it was a relief not to constantly have to mind his own strength with his partner. It was something he had been very conscious of with Cho in particular; for all that he had known intellectually that she was far stronger than she looked, she was so tiny and delicate-looking that he had always been on his guard when he touched her. The same had been true, to a certain extent, with Ginny during their brief fling.

When they finally separated, they were both breathing hard and Ron's lazy grin was predatory.

"So ... are we going to try the bed, then?"

No, of course not. Harry was going to turn around and walk away from this ....

Not.

xXx

Harry drifted awake to darkness and a feeling of pleasantly achy exhaustion. Ron prided himself on being very thorough in his attentions.

He lay still for a moment, listening to Ron's even breathing and the muted sounds from the Muggle street outside. Then he freed his left arm from the sheets and squinted at his watch.

2.30 am. Damn, he needed to get home; he hadn't intended to stay this long.

He sat up slowly, rubbing his face in an attempt to wake up. The room was a dim, blurry haze. Where had he left his wand and glasses? On the window ledge? His clothes were probably all over the floor.

"Harry?" Ron's voice was drowsy murmur from the depths of the bedclothes.

"Yeah?" Harry located his glasses and put them on, sighing in relief as his focus sharpened. Ron was slowly sitting up in bed; he looked as doped-up and shagged silly as Harry felt.

"Where are you going?"

"Home. I told Sirius and Remus I'd be late, but not _this_ late. _Lumos!_ " His wand lit up, highlighting the jumble of clothes around the bed. With a sigh, Harry began to sort out his things and get dressed. He needed a shower in the worst way, but that would have to wait until he got home.

"Why don't you just stay?"

"Because Sirius'll worry and the others'll wonder why I spent the night in your room." Harry zipped up his jeans, tucked his t-shirt in and knelt down to tie the laces on his trainers.

"You want to rethink that secrecy policy?" Ron grumbled.

"Okay. We'll tell your mum first, shall we?" There was a pause. "I'll take that as a no."

Harry straightened up and tucked his wand into his sleeve. For a moment he was tempted just to Apparate home and to hell with the lack of a licence, but Sirius and Remus had some pretty stiff wards over the house and he had no idea if any of them were designed to prevent unauthorised Apparition. But dammit, he _hated_ the Floo network. Especially at this time of night, when there would be plenty of drunks staggering home and Flooing themselves into the wrong grates.

Ron sat amid the well-rumpled sheets, looking rather fed up. "So, when will I see you next?"

 _Tomorrow, at this rate,_ Harry thought, eyeing his friend's bare torso with guilty lust. _This is getting out of hand already._

When he got home, the house was very quiet. From the amount of noise that accompanied his violent expulsion from the fireplace, anyone might reasonably have expected a baby elephant to have arrived, rather than an undersized almost-eighteen year old, but nothing stirred as Harry grimly picked himself up and dusted down his robe. When he climbed the stairs there was no sign of light under Sirius's door, nor under the well-warded door to the attic where Remus spent his full moons these days.

 _So much for the pair of them being fearsome Aurors,_ Harry thought wryly as he let himself into his own bedroom and carefully shut the door behind him.

Then he flopped across the end of his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

 _Okay, that was sad. Less than two nights away from him and I have to go chasing over there for a quickie._

 _Well … be honest. A not-so-quickie. And not just the once._

This was disturbing to Harry. Lust he was familiar with. He was a teenager and used to being turned on by just about anything and everything. But even at the height of his relationship with Cho, he had never experienced anything like _this_ – this complex and frightening jumble of emotions and impulses that left him feeling like he was constantly trying to fly off in a dozen different directions at once.

The secrecy didn't help. Harry couldn't imagine why people considered clandestine affairs to be exciting; he was _frightened_. More than ever now, he wished he felt comfortable enough with someone, anyone, to talk to them about the situation he was digging himself ever deeper into. But the only people who came to mind were Hermione, Remus and Sirius.

Hermione he guessed already felt uncomfortable with the budding relationship between her two friends. He didn't want to put her on the spot like that any more than he and Ron already had. Remus he felt sure would be unshockable and would undoubtedly give him excellent advice but, much as he liked and respected him, Harry just didn't feel close enough to him to tell him something so personal. The man had once been his _teacher_. It felt like an insuperable barrier. Sirius ….

Harry really, really wanted to believe that he could talk to Sirius about anything at all, but dearly as he loved and trusted his godfather, a doubt remained – a doubt that plagued his relationships with every adult.

The fact was, adults had rarely been there for Harry when he really needed them; he had done most of his growing up and learning entirely on his own. Beyond performing the bare legal minimum required of them as his guardians his uncle and aunt hadn't cared less what happened to him, and once he joined the wizard world Harry had gleaned most of the things he needed to know from Ron and Hermione.

He had no doubt that Sirius loved him and would give his own life to keep him safe. But he had no idea how the very heterosexual Sirius would feel about his godson being 'queer'. Wizards, like Muggles, still had to learn a lot about tolerance. And while the largely rational portion of his mind told him that Sirius of all people would be different and wouldn't care one way or the other, there was still that nagging childhood doubt at the back of his mind.

No, Harry would have to deal with this as he dealt with everything else – on his own.


	3. Sunday 26th July

"If he's not awake in half an hour, I'll take him a cup of tea," Sirius commented, as he lingered over his own mug of breakfast coffee.

"No need," Lupin replied. He cocked an ear thoughtfully. "He's just going into the bathroom now." Around the full moon, his senses were magnified almost beyond endurance - one of the reasons he had isolated himself for more than one night while teaching at Hogwarts. He could easily hear Harry groggily blundering around upstairs, just as he was almost overwhelmed by the smell of the soap Sirius had washed with that morning, in spite of it technically being 'unscented'.

"I'd love to know what he was up to last night," the other man remarked speculatively. "It was what - two o'clock before he came in? I'm going to have to take a look at that Floo, though, I thought the chimney was going to collapse."

"Good idea," Lupin said neutrally. He thought the chances of Harry voluntarily confessing his adventures of the previous night to be very small. His extra-sharp nose had given him a good idea when he passed the teenager's bedroom that morning, though - and raised some interesting questions, although he was equally sure that he wasn't going to get any answers to them. "Well, he wasn't out drinking, that's for sure, so at least we won't have to deal with his hangover."

"Really? Well, I always said it was a girl." Sirius grinned as he drained his mug and went to rinse it.

Lupin hesitated, looking at the other man's back thoughtfully. Harry obviously didn't want them to know about this latest wrinkle in his life, or he would have said something. And given the nature of the wrinkle, that wasn't so terribly surprising. But one of the many animal traits had Lupin gained as a result of his lycanthropy was the ability to 'smell' emotions; and along with the heavy musky smell of sex that lingered around Harry's door that morning was guilt, confusion and anxiety.

If there was one thing Harry didn't need any more of in his life, it was anxiety. The boy had enough on his plate already.

Lupin could understand why Harry might be reticent about saying anything about his situation, but if Sirius had an idea what was going on he would at least be prepared for any unexpected emotional fallout. Sirius wasn't the brainless, insensitive mutt people sometimes took him for. And he genuinely cared more for Harry's welfare than his own.

So he took a deep breath and said carefully, "What makes you so sure it was a girl?"

xXx

When Harry dragged himself into the kitchen, it was to find Lupin rather primly pulling on a pair of gardening gloves and Sirius refilling the kettle. His guardian grinned at him wickedly.

"Coffee?" he asked, in a bright, overly loud voice.

Harry glared at him, aggrieved. "I didn't get pissed last night!"

"Oh, good! I'd hate to think that racket the Floo made was you chucking up in it."

Harry flopped into one of the chairs by the table, looking put out. "When did you become a morning person?"

"When he discovered how annoying it could be to those of us who aren't," Lupin replied, raising a brow at the other man. "I'm going to spend some time sorting out my herb garden and if the pair of you value your lives you'll leave me to it. I'm not at my best today. Harry, I recommend that you get some breakfast and make yourself scarce. Sirius is planning to try to mend the Floo, which I guarantee will wipe that smile off his face. I don't think you'll want to be around when it happens."

"Whew!" Sirius said, watching Lupin stalk out the back door. "He was never like this at school, you know. Did I tell you about the time – "

 _"Sirius ...."_

"Maybe later," Sirius finished, and he winked at Harry.

The teenager grinned in spite of himself. "You're like Fred and George Weasley - you've got to go that extra inch, haven't you?"

"Life would be so boring if I didn't." Sirius strolled to the pantry and rummaged around in it, emerging a moment or two later with a large packet of cereal which he tossed to Harry. "Breakfast."

He made tea while Harry poured cereal and milk into a bowl and started to crunch on it.

"I'm not going to ask," he said, when he'd made the tea and put a mugful in front of his godson.

Harry paused, spoon dripping milk, staring at him. "What?"

"I'm not going to ask where you were or what you were doing last night," Sirius clarified cheerfully.

"Oh." Harry wasn't sure what to make of this. "Why not?"

"Because I'm hoping you'll confide it all to a secret diary. Then I can raid your room, find your diary and read about it instead," Sirius told him earnestly. "It's more fun that way."

Harry wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. Sirius had a really _weird_ sense of humour. "Sirius, I don't keep a diary."

"You don't?"

"Well ... no. That's the sort of thing girls do, isn't it?"

"Moony keeps a diary," his godfather told him.

"Do you know that because you've raided his room and read it?" Harry asked.

The mad grin he got in return made him wonder if Sirius had really done _exactly_ that. Then the older man was jumping to his feet and slapping him on the shoulder.

"Eat up! Then we can get started on the Floo."

"When did I get drafted in to help?" demanded Harry indignantly, but Sirius was already on his way out of the kitchen, saying something about tools.

xXx

Watching - and assisting - Sirius in fixing the Floo reminded Harry strongly of some of the old silent movies he'd seen on his Uncle and Aunt's television when he was a child; disastrous, but terribly funny to watch. Sirius was _not_ a natural handyman and it quickly became clear that he didn't know exactly what he was doing.

Harry's first nervous suggestion, that he should get someone in to fix it, was firmly vetoed. Like every alpha-male ever born, Sirius honestly believed that he could fix anything with a mixture of common sense and brute force. Consequently, it wasn't long before the grate was in pieces on the floor and everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. Fortunately, Lupin appeared just before the first cloud of soot happened, quickly assessed the situation, and helped Harry to cover every surface with dustsheets.

But it was Harry who had to remind Sirius to disconnect the Floo from the network before doing anything to it, or they might have ended up with a real disaster on their hands. As it was, Ron walked through the back door instead, taking Harry at least by surprise.

"No wonder I got shunted off the Floo at the nearest Owl Post Office!" he said cheerfully, as he stepped carefully into the room. "I had to Apparate here and the wards stopped me at the gate …." His voice trailed off, his eyes widening a little when he saw the mess, and his mouth twitched irrepressibly at the sight of Sirius's rear end poking out of the chimney. Muffled sounds of scraping were accompanied by copious swearing. "What's Sirius doing?"

"Mending the Floo," Harry explained. "I'm supposed to be helping."

They exchanged grins.

"Looks like the inside of Dad's shed," Ron commented. "Are you really busy?"

Harry eyed him just a shade warily, the previous night's activities suddenly uppermost in his mind again. "I dunno - I suppose I could slope off. Why?"

"I'm moving the rest of my stuff from Mum's. I was hoping you could give me a hand."

"I don't see why not – all I'm doing here is holding tools and praying the chimney doesn't collapse."

"Never underestimate the power of prayer," a quiet voice put in, "especially when Sirius is mending anything."

Lupin had walked up behind them and he smiled when they both jumped. "Hello, Ron. Ready for Monday?"

Ron grinned in anticipation. "Yep! Can't wait .... Oh, Mum said to invite the three of you to dinner tonight. Seven o'clock."

"That's very kind of her. I'm sure Sirius will be delighted - Sirius?"

A stream of unintelligible abuse from deep within the chimney-breast was the only response.

"I'm sure I speak for both of us when I say we'll be delighted," Lupin said without missing a beat, and Ron chuckled. "Harry?"

Harry jumped again, and stared wide-eyed at Lupin. "What?"

Lupin raised a brow. "You're not doing anything else, are you?"

"Oh! Oh no. No, I'll come. Thanks." Inwardly, Harry was cursing himself as fluently as Sirius. Could he _sound_ like a bigger moron?

But Lupin, who never seemed to overreact to anything, merely nodded and turned back to Ron. "In that case, we'll all be there. Now, do I understand you're offering Harry an escape route from this fiasco? Because if you are, now would probably be a good time to go - before Sirius can knock down anymore soot or drag you both into helping."

"'Nuff said," Ron grinned and he grabbed Harry's elbow. "Come on, mate, let's scram."

xXx

Moving Ron's gear was the easy part. He didn't have much and what he did have was well worn. The difficult part was achieving the move under Mrs. Weasley's disapproving eye. Harry hadn't been in the house five minutes before he heard ominous mutterings.

"Too young … irresponsible … thinks he _knows_ … that poor girl cooped up in a house full of boys …."

"Ignore it," Ron advised him blithely. "She did the same thing when Fred and George moved out." He handed Harry a very battered wooden box. "She reckons Sirius has got the right idea, hanging onto you," he added. "Should have heard her shriek when I said you'd be moving in too at the end of the week!"

"Is that why she invited him and Remus round tonight?" Harry asked, dismayed.

"Oh, probably!" Ron saw his expression. "Come off it! You'll be eighteen, they won't be able to stop you. Besides, I don't reckon Sirius would try, would he? He wouldn't have bought you that furniture yesterday if he wasn't okay about you moving out."

Harry wasn't quite so sure about that, but knowing he couldn't be forcibly prevented from moving was something. Not that he wanted to butt heads with Sirius over it.

"Why's she going on about Hermione?" he asked. "If _her_ parents are okay about her living with the rest of us, what's the problem?"

Ron sniggered. "Mum had a bust-up with Ginny, that's why. Ginny said she could move in with us next year and keep Hermione company. Mum was livid! Okay, mate, that's the lot. Let's go."

They wrestled the boxes into the Floo under Mrs. Weasley's glare. Harry was almost glad of the distraction the hot ash and violent swirling provided. Then he was falling out of the fireplace at the other end under another pair of sharp eyes - Hermione's.

"Ron, you're not moving out _permanently_ ," she pointed out as she straightened Harry up and helped to drag his load out of the grate.

"Want to bet?" was the cocky response.

"And I'm sure Harry has better things to do than help you move your rubbish."

"Yeah, I reckon he does too," Ron retorted with a provocative wink and Harry saw a blush suddenly stain Hermione's cheeks.

"Oh, _honestly_ \- !"

"Maybe I should just go help Sirius mend the Floo," he muttered uncomfortably.

"You'll have a bit of a time getting back there while it's disconnected," Ron reminded him cheerfully. "Unless you've got a portkey, that is."

Damn. He was right, of course. It was an absolute pain not being able to Apparate yet.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Please don't let me stop the two of you trysting," she said, ignoring Ron's snort at the word. "The others are all out, and I'm going out too in a minute. You can do what you like for a couple of hours."

"Reckon she's getting used to us?" Ron asked a few minutes later, when they were alone in his room in the attic.

"Maybe," Harry replied noncommittally. "You know, you shouldn't tease her. She's being really good about it all."

Ron shrugged. "Wouldn't make much difference if she wasn't."

"It would. If she wanted to be difficult, we'd be in Queer Street."

The redhead chuckled. "We're in _Queer Street_ anyway!"

"Very funny."

"Everyone else is out," Ron said, changing the subject. "You know what that means?"

Harry eyed him suspiciously. "What?"

"The bathroom's free."

xXx

"Like that, do you?"

"Yeah." Harry swallowed hard and tried to distract himself from Ron's wandering hands. This was nice - _too_ nice. He wasn't entirely sure he was comfortable with it. And he felt like Ron was always one step ahead of him in these strange new experiences, which was a disturbing state of affairs.

"Thought you might." Ron sounded just a little bit smug and Harry could feel himself seizing up again with sudden nerves.

He sought frantically for some way to bring things back under his control, but the words popped out of his mouth before he could properly consider them.

"So … Ginny wants to move in here too?"

Ron paused in his intimate exploration of his friend. "You know, my sister is the last person I want to think about right now," he said pointedly.

Harry had a sudden and alarming flashback to a certain encounter he'd had with Ginny in a useful little hidden room he'd discovered at Hogwarts, where they'd made good use of the experience he'd garnered from his time with Cho Chang. Since Ron didn't know anything about Harry's brief fling with his sister, this was a really bad moment to be thinking of it.

"Sorry," he muttered, and he tried to drag his treacherous mind back under control. He looked around at the bathroom, making himself study the fittings of the two basins, the curtain at the window, the row of mixed toiletries on the shelf, the shower cubicle in the corner …. Nothing worked. From being relaxed only a few minutes ago, he had gone to being tighter than a wire.

"Relax, will you?" Ron demanded. "This is supposed to be fun, you know, not an appointment with the Inquisition!"

Now Harry had to cope with guilt and an unexpected rush of anger too. The emotional roller coaster was starting to get him down in a really big way.

"I'm trying to relax!" he snapped, before he could stop himself. "I'm sorry if I'm too uptight for you!"

There was a sudden silence and Harry got a brief impression of Ron's wide, startled blue eyes before he looked away. A slow wash of crimson began to work its way up his neck.

"Look," Ron said in a tone of exaggerated patience, "I told you before – if you don't want to do this, you only have to say so."

"It's not that I don't want to do it," Harry muttered. "It's just ...." But words failed him. How was he supposed to make Ron understand how he felt, when he didn't have a clue how to describe it to himself?

"Does us being together make you feel that freaky?" Ron asked in a quiet tone.

"No! It's not that I feel _freaky_ at all!" Harry slapped his hand down on the side of the bathtub in frustration. "I feel ... I feel confused," he admitted finally. "I feel like I'm not in control of what's happening now and I don't know what's going to happen with us next, and I don't like it."

He didn't really expect Ron to understand, but when he looked up he saw the light of realisation in the redhead's eyes.

"That talk we had before our mock NEWTs didn't really sink in with you, did it?" It wasn't an accusation, which surprised Harry.

"Maybe not," he admitted. "It was pretty abstract when we were just talking about it. It was all feeling-stuff; I didn't really think about the physical side at all." He considered for a moment, then added, "I s'pose I thought it would be like it was with Cho. But it's not – it's different with you. A lot different."

"How?"

Harry didn't know if he could put it into words. He felt desperately uncomfortable and exposed.

"Just … feels different," he muttered.

"Why?"

God, but Ron could be a persistent git. "Because it's you," he squeezed out. "You're my friend."

Ron scrubbed his face with one hand and seemed to come to a decision.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get dressed. We need to talk about this."

Oh no ... Harry didn't want to talk about it, he wanted to find a quiet corner somewhere and curl up in it. But there was no thwarting a Weasley on a mission, so he reluctantly got out of the bath and dried himself.

When they were dressed Ron led the way down to the kitchen rather than his room in the attic. He put the kettle on the range to boil, set out two mugs and the makings of a pot of tea and, almost as an afterthought, set up a small proximity-alarm spell on the doors to warn if any of the others returned unexpectedly.

"Sit down!" he said, a little exasperated when he saw Harry dithering in the doorway. "I'm not going to start throwing hexes at you, for crying out loud!"

Harry wouldn't have blamed him if he did. He slid into a chair at the table, wishing he were anywhere else. A few minutes later, Ron dumped a mug of tea in front of him and put a large tin of mixed biscuits in the middle of the table. He took a seat opposite Harry and looked at him fixedly for a moment, before letting out a sudden puff of breath.

"I'm no good at this," he commented.

Harry twitched. "Neither am I."

"Well, hear me out. We've got to talk about this and sort it out before it kills one of us."

Harry opened his mouth and shut it again. He didn't know what to say.

Ron came to a decision and laid his hands flat on the table between them. "Look, mate, I'm going to be up front with you here, okay? And I know we've said all this stuff before, but I'm going to say it again because I don't think you really thought about it the first time around."

"I _did_ think about it," Harry began helplessly. "God, if you knew - "

"I know you think you did, but I don't think you had any real idea what you were getting yourself into."

"Oh, and you did?" Harry shot back before he could stop himself.

Ron's brows went up. "You'd be surprised," he said cryptically. "But forget that. Just listen for a minute. I know I've said this a few times now, but I love you. Are you clear on that? I love you as my best friend, but I also love you as a person and I want to be with you like this. Permanently. I'm not joking here, Harry, I'm absolutely serious. I want this to be a long-term thing." He took a deep breath. " _But_. It has to go both ways. If you don't feel the same way about me, if for you it's just about being friends or if you're in this because you're confused or looking for security or - or - you're just afraid of having to deal with the big, bad world on your own … then it has to stop right here. Because if we're not both looking at this exactly the same way, then we're going to end up hurting each other really badly."

There was a pause. Then he added quietly, "You told me back in Scotland that you could live without being my lover but not without being my friend. Well, I'm saying the same thing to you now. If you can't give one hundred percent to a relationship between us, then I'd rather you said so here and now and we'll finish it and go back to the way we were."

Harry looked at him a little disbelievingly. "You really think you can do that?"

"I didn't say I'd _like_ it," Ron retorted. "I'd hate it. But yes, I could do it, because I don't want to mess things up completely. You're the best mate ever, Harry, and I can live with that if that's what you prefer."

"It's not that I don't enjoy sleeping with you," Harry pointed out, a little irritated. "I do - "

"I got that impression," Ron put in, with a quick grin.

"I mean, far be it from me to inflate your ego," he continued, rolling his eyes, "but the sex is great. Better than I've ever had."

"In your vast experience," the redhead jibed.

"Yeah, and like _you're_ such a Casanova," he needled back, but they were both relaxing a little. "I don't know what's going on in my head at the moment," he confessed. "It felt like I was just getting used to things when we were in Scotland – it started to feel _right_ , us being together. And then we had to come back here and suddenly everything felt weird again. One minute we were free to do what the hell we liked and for the first time it felt like ... I dunno, like I was an adult and could make all my own decisions, I suppose, but then we came back here and everything was a big secret suddenly and Hermione acted like we'd volunteered for a dangerous experiment. And on top of that I'm not actually an adult after all and I have to stay with Sirius because presumably I can't be trusted to manage my own life for a week, even though I've been managing it pretty much _all_ my life and ...."

He ran out of words and breath for moment, and sat rubbing at his scar fretfully, feeling Ron's eyes watching him thoughtfully. Then the rest bubbled up and out of him.

"And on top of all that, I'm eighteen next week. Which is, you know, great and yeah, I'm having a big party to celebrate, but _Witch Weekly_ is bribing my school-friends to give them photos of me in the school showers and for some reason everyone in the world wants to know who I'm shagging. The _Daily Prophet_ 's muttering about doom and gloom and telling everyone that the Boy Who Lived just left school with really good marks in his Defence Against the Dark Arts NEWT and is going to become an Auror – is this a good moment to mention how _shit_ that feels? Because, you know, there's a _monster_ out there who's been trying to kill me since practically before I was born and everyone just knows he's gearing up to try again at some point, and that's pretty shit too because they all seem to think I'm just going to zap him again and it'll all go back to being hunky-dory. Everyone except Fudge, of course, because he still doesn't really believe Voldemort's back."

Harry ran out of words again and his breath hitched in his chest. "I'm sorry," he muttered, after a moment or two, feeling Ron's sympathetic eyes on his face. "I just - I really know why people talk about going to live on a desert island. And if you like, this would be a good moment for you to slap me and tell me not to be hysterical."

"I'm not about to slap you for spilling your guts for once," Ron told him. A tiny grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. "I might tie you up and spank you ...."

Harry blinked at him and then the words sank in. He groaned softly, closing his eyes. "Oh God ... I must be really far gone, because that actually sounds interesting."

A tiny scrape of a chair over tiled floor was all the warning he got before Ron grabbed his arms and dragged him up out of his chair, pulling him into a fierce hug.

For once Harry didn't seize up with nerves. He accepted the hug for what it was and clung onto Ron like a limpet, wishing everything could be as uncomplicated as this.

"I don't think I answered your question," he mumbled after several long minutes.

"Oh, I don't know." Ron's voice was muffled by his hair. "Maybe you did."

"I _do_ want to be with you," Harry told him. "I just wish everyone else – and I do mean everyone – would piss off and let us get on with it. It's so much easier when it's just you and me."

"Hm," Ron said agreeably.

"And I know that's horrible, because I do love Hermione and Sirius and your mum and everyone." Then Harry reconsidered. "Well actually, no - I _don't_ love everyone. Voldemort can just die. And Fudge needs a sock stuffed in his mouth."

Ron sniggered. Then he twitched. "Damn. That's the alarm spell – someone's coming."

"Oh, fuck it," Harry said grumpily and let go very reluctantly.

"I love it when you talk Anglo-Saxon to me."

They both quickly stepped apart and Harry ran a nervous hand over his hair, wondering if anything in his appearance was giving him away. Then the Floo jangled horribly in the living room and there was a thud that was audible even to them as someone fell out of the grate. Ron quickly whipped out his wand and removed the alarm spell, peering around the kitchen door.

A dishevelled Neville came charging out of the living room, panting, and ran up the stairs as though he had a Chimaera on his tail. A split second later the Floo jangled again and someone else tumbled out. A blonde girl in rumpled robes with a pink, excited face also plunged into the hallway and up the stairs in Neville's wake.

"Come back, gorgeous!" she trilled.

Ron and Harry looked at each other, nonplussed.

"Well!" Ron said after a moment. "Looks like everybody's doing it. Except us, for the time being."

xXx

The Floo was mended by the time Harry returned to the house in Godric's Hollow, although he didn't like to ask if Sirius had managed that feat on his own. There was a couple of hours to go before they were all due to go to the Burrow, which was unfortunate because Harry found he had a lot on his mind – primarily the conversation with Ron.

He kept worrying at it like a loose tooth, mostly because, despite their apparent agreement before he left, Harry recognised that there had been a lot of truth in the things Ron had said to him about his reasons for being involved with his friend, and he hadn't addressed them.

Part of him _was_ afraid to go out into the world without Ron at his side. Part of him _was_ confused about how much of his feelings was tied up in friendship and not love – love of the kind Ron wanted from him. But mostly he was just plain confused.

And more than a little frustrated. There was no denying that in spite of the unfortunate turn their "tryst" (to use Hermione's word) had taken, he had been physically aroused at the time and now that arousal was coming back to haunt him in the most uncomfortable way.

Annoyed at his treacherous body, Harry made himself take a cold shower. It improved the physical problem but not his despair at how often this was happening to him lately. For God's sake, was this _normal?_ He hadn't been this bad even when he was sixteen and turned on by anything and everything.

When he finally got dressed and came downstairs again, Sirius was puttering about the living room. He looked up when Harry walked in and raised a brow.

"Are you okay? You're looking a bit peaky."

"Oh ... um ... yeah." Not quite sure what to do or say, Harry stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets and looked vaguely around the room.

"Anything I can help with?" Sirius sounded quite matter-of-fact.

Harry didn't think this was something he could ask someone about. He had a brief vision of turning to Neville and asking for his advice about sex. Or Dean. Or Seamus. Or Ron's brothers, Fred and George.

It just wasn't going to happen.

On the other hand, Sirius was most definitely not one of those people. He was older ... presumably a man of experience. And he was the only person who had thought to give Harry an embarrassing but rather helpful book on the subject when he was fifteen.

Not that it had mentioned anything about this, of course.

"Sirius ...." He couldn't believe he was about to do this and rushed onwards before he could lose his nerve. "Is it possible to have too much sex?"

A profound silence fell in which Harry actually counted ten seconds by the grandfather clock ticking in the hall behind him. Sirius, taken completely by surprise, looked like his eyes were about to pop out.

Then a polite, slightly startled voice from behind him said, "Would you rather I went back upstairs for a moment or two?"

Harry closed his eyes in mortification. "No, what the heck," he said with a sigh. "Why don't you join in? In fact, let's save this conversation for when we're having dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. I bet they'll have an opinion."

"Well, a cross-section of opinions _can_ be very helpful," Lupin agreed, his voice quivering with amusement, "but I don't think Arthur's ready for a heart-attack quite yet."

Released from his paralysis, Sirius let out a great snort of laughter and quickly sat down on the arm of a chair. "Sorry, Harry," he managed and he made a manful effort to control himself.

"No, it's okay," Harry said irritably and he slumped down into the chair next to his godfather. "I don't know why I asked anyway. Stupid bloody question ...."

"Not ... not necessarily." Sirius grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly even as he dragged in a deep breath to smother his laughter.

"Why did you ask, Harry?" Lupin asked him in a kindly tone, and he took the seat opposite.

"I don't think I want to go into that," Harry muttered. "It's just ... maybe that's not what I meant. I mean ... should I ... why ...." This wasn't working. He took a deep breath. "Why am I always ...." he gestured helplessly with his hands, unable to get the words out, " _you know_ , these days?"

"You're eighteen," Lupin said calmly. "It's hormonal."

Harry looked at him a bit sceptically. "Aren't I getting a bit old for that?"

"Not really," Sirius said, and the laugh was still in his voice. "Speaking as a representative of the previous generation, I have to tell you that as a bloke you _never_ get too old for it."

"Yeah, but ...." Harry sighed and voiced the thoughts he'd had before he decided to ask Sirius in the first place. "It doesn't seem to be getting better, in fact it's getting worse! I wasn't this ... this ...."

"Randy?" Sirius offered helpfully.

Harry glared. "Well, I wasn't, even when I was going out with Cho!"

There was a pause before Lupin asked carefully, "I take it you're seeing someone else now?"

"Well ... yes." He prayed they wouldn't ask who.

"Thought so," Sirius commented. He didn't seem particularly surprised.

"To go back to your original question ...." Lupin said tactfully.

Harry felt himself blushing again. "Well, is it possible?" he asked a little defiantly.

"Depends on the sex," Sirius said.

Harry twisted in his seat to look at him a little suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

Sirius grinned at him. "Well, if you're being tied up and whipped three times a day, that could be a bit dangerous to your health."

"Sirius!" Lupin said, exasperated, over Harry's indignant splutters. "That's not very helpful!" He rubbed his face with one hand and seemed to gather himself. "Harry, without going into the intimate details of your love life – which is something I'm sure neither of us wants to do – I really don't think you have anything to worry about, provided you're being careful." There was another pause. "You are being careful, aren't you?"

Harry looked at him blankly. "Careful?"

Lupin raised his brows at him. "Yes, Harry – _careful_. Do I need to spell it out?"

"What – oh!" Harry's mind boggled as he suddenly realised what the other man was asking. "Oh, um ...."

How the hell was he supposed to answer that?

"A paternity suit is a really bad way to start out in adult life," Sirius put in quickly. Over the top of Harry's head he shot an exasperated glare at his old partner in crime, who responded with an unreadable look.

Harry rallied himself though. "Yes, I'm being careful!" he retorted, rolling his eyes. If there was anything less likely than a pregnancy coming into the equation, he couldn't imagine it.

"Good. In that case, provided you have a willing partner, perhaps you should just enjoy it."

Having a willing partner definitely wasn't the problem, Harry reflected. If anything, Ron was even randier than he was.

"Yes, but ...." Then he sighed and managed a small, rueful grin. "It's just - I don't think there's enough cold water in the world to deal with the in-between times."

Sirius let out a shout of laughter and Lupin grinned.

"Think about Snape's potions classes," he advised. "That should do it. Now go and get your robe, we're running late."

But when Harry was gone, running up the stairs, Sirius turned to Lupin looking thoroughly exasperated. "What do you mean, _Are you being careful?_ "

"Keep your voice down! He thinks we don't know, Sirius, and he obviously isn't ready to tell us yet either. It's better to make it seem like we think he's seeing a girl."

"Yes, but – " Sirius shook his head and looked at his friend wonderingly. "I really wasn't expecting him to say something like that."

"Do you think I was?" Lupin demanded in an undertone.

"No, but – my God, Moony, if he can ask me that, what will I do if he asks me about the other thing?"

"You'll help him," Lupin said sharply. "Sirius, you're one of the few people Harry will turn to in a crisis. If this situation gets too much for him – and at his age, it probably will – then you _have_ to be there for him. Do you realise just how much worse it will be if he suddenly gets the idea that he can't rely upon you of all people?"

There was no time for more; Harry was thundering back down the stairs already. Lupin shot Sirius a look of fierce warning and blanked his face again just as the youth came into the room, shrugging into his robe.

Harry looked at the two of them a little warily as he shook out the robe's creases. "Are we going?"

"Are you ready then?" Sirius asked him, and a grin curled the corner of his mouth. "Robe on straight? Hair combed? Hormones under control?"

"Shurrup Sirius," Harry grumbled, but he grinned and mimed a punch at his godfather's arm.

Lupin rolled his eyes. "Get into that fireplace, the pair of you."

xXx

"Hi Harry!" Ginny Weasley slipped into the spare seat next to Harry. "Sorry I'm late everyone."

"I called you twenty minutes ago, young woman!" Molly Weasley scolded as she passed a plate filled with potatoes, salad and chicken pie to her daughter.

"The ghoul kept moving things in front of the door," was Ginny's reply.

Harry glanced at her and smiled in spite of himself. At seventeen, Ginny was a really pretty girl – but he had already noticed that the year before. Right now there was a large cobweb in her bright hair and streaks of dust down her clothes, and it didn't make the slightest bit of difference to her prettiness.

"What have you been doing?" he asked her.

She wrinkled her nose at him good-humouredly. "Stashing boxes in the attic. Since everyone's moving out all of a sudden, Mum said Percy and I could change our rooms if we wanted to. He's staying put, but I'm moving into Fred and George's old room. It's bigger and there's better light from the window."

"Sure you want to do that?" Ron asked sceptically from his seat on the other side of the table. "There must be all sorts of booby-traps."

"Not anymore," she retorted. " _Some_ of us know how to get on their good side."

"But not on the ghoul's good side, obviously," Harry commented and he picked the cobweb out of her hair, smiling.

There was a sudden sharp pain in his ankle, making him yelp. Harry stared across the table in astonishment, for it felt like Ron had _kicked_ him ....

"Sorry," Ron told him. "I'm always doing that with this table – my legs are too long."

"Right," Harry said, but he hadn't been mistaken – there was a definite glare in Ron's eyes when he met them. Then the redhead turned back to his plate as though nothing had happened.

"I've told you before, Ron. Keep your feet tucked under your chair when we have guests," Molly told him sternly.

"Harry's not a guest," Ron replied irritably. "He's practically family."

"Nice," Ginny commented sardonically. "See, Harry, he only kicks family. Don't you feel privileged?"

"Harry has his own family," her mother said.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, trying to lighten the atmosphere between the two siblings, "and I used to get kicked around by them, too, so I'm used to it."

There was a shocked pause.

"I meant at my aunt and uncle's house!" Harry said, realising what they were all thinking.

"Nice one, mate!" Ron snorted.

"We string him up from the ceiling by his thumbs these days," Sirius commented casually, from his seat next to Arthur Weasley. "It's more entertaining."

"You may joke, Sirius, but I'm sure you feel a lot more at ease knowing you can give Harry a _proper_ home now," Molly said firmly. She fixed a beady eye upon her youngest son. "Of course, _Harry_ knows how to appreciate these things. Unlike some, who'll regret - "

"Molly!" Arthur interrupted quickly.

She glowered at Ron.

"I'm moving out too next week," Harry remarked, trying to draw her fire away from Ron, who was starting to redden with annoyance.

"Oh no, dear! I'm sure you'll be so much more comfortable at home with Sirius and Remus."

Lupin chuckled. "We've barely seen him so far!"

"Yeah, he left me jammed in the Floo today while he played hooky with Ron," Sirius added.

"You press-ganged me into helping in the first place," Harry pointed out unrepentantly. An idea occurred to him and he pinned on a saintly expression. "Besides, you were swearing, and I know my mother wouldn't have wanted me to hear language like that."

Sirius raised his brows. "We _are_ talking about Lily Potter here, aren't we? Lily Evans as was?"

"She _did_ have a very creative vocabulary sometimes, didn't she?" Lupin agreed reminiscently.

"Especially when she was in the middle of giving birth to Harry, according to James."

"Was that before or after she expelled him from the delivery room with a well-placed hex to his rear?"

"Who, James or Harry?"

Arthur chuckled at Harry's expression and Ginny giggled into her glass of lemonade.

"Oh really!" Molly said, but she was beginning to smile. She hadn't finished trying though. "Harry, dear, do you really think it's a good idea to move out so soon? I mean ...."

"I _thought_ I was moving into the student house this week!" Harry said, rather aggrieved.

"Ingrate," Sirius said, grinning at him.

But Harry felt a twinge of guilt nevertheless. "It's not that I'm ungrateful, it's just - "

"Oh, for crying out loud, Mum!" Ron exploded unexpectedly. " _Now_ look what you've started!"

Molly's eyes flashed.

"You may have chosen to leave home, Ronald Weasley, but you'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you're at my dinner table!" she snapped, pointing her fork at him.

"Yeah, is it any wonder I wanted to get out of here?" he said angrily and before either of his parents could remonstrate with him further, he threw down his own fork and jumped up from the table, stalking out of the kitchen with a face like a thundercloud.

There was a tense pause during which Sirius and Lupin both studied their water glasses politely and Harry stared at his plate. Then Arthur cleared his throat a little self-consciously.

"I see Percy's working late again tonight, dear," he said to Molly.

There was an empty space at the table between Ron's place and his mother.

She sniffed, still flushed with anger. "He might be!" she said tartly. "Or he might just be out with that girl again – I'm sure I don't know one way or the other these days! He doesn't confide in _me_."

Sirius looked down the table. "Oh I don't know, Molly," he drawled, looking at Harry. "Perhaps you should be glad of that!"

Harry shot a furious glare at him, but Lupin got in first before he could say anything to his mischievous godfather.

"Sirius, stop it."

Molly sniffed again. " _Harry_ knows when he's well off!"

Harry experienced a strong desire to emulate Ron's example but before he could say anything, Ginny dug her elbow into his side. When he looked at her, her face was pink and her eyes brimming over with merriment. Some of his tension eased and he turned back to his dinner with a reluctant grin.

xXx

Ron was nowhere to be found after dinner and Harry had the sinking feeling that he'd simply Apparated back to the student house. He followed everyone else out into the garden, where they sat around with their coffee, talking about the state of the Ministry and the latest Death Eater activities. Harry quickly lost interest when Arthur, Remus and Sirius started talking politics and he was relieved when Ginny caught his eye and nodded meaningfully towards the house.

"Come and have a look at what I've done with my new room," she suggested, as they walked through the kitchen.

Harry had only been inside Fred and George's room once, last year when he had been staying at the Burrow but was on such terrible terms with Ron. It had been an alarming cave filled with all sorts of stuff that the twins used in their experiments into new jokes and tricks, and many surfaces had sported burns, cracks or other damage inflicted in the process.

When Ginny opened the door, he hardly recognised it. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his room at Sirius's house although there were more frills and the colours were predominantly buttercup yellow.

"You've made a big difference here!" he congratulated her, although he didn't like to ask where she'd got the money to do it.

Ginny seemed to hear the question anyway. "Fred and George helped me out," she explained. "I'm acting as their agent at Hogwarts, running a small-scale outlet. Running a second shop in Hogsmeade would be impossible and they couldn't get Zonko's interested in their stuff, but this way is better for them anyway because my commission is smaller and people won't have to wait for Hogsmeade weekends to stock up. And if I run out of anything, Fred can send it practically the next day or bring it through the Floo at a pinch."

Harry had to admire her. Ron had initially helped the twins out by passing around samples and testing new tricks, but Ginny had clearly struck the better deal.

They sat down on the edge of her bed and Harry began to feel just a little bit nervous. His fling with her was eight months in the past now, and had only lasted a couple of stress-filled weeks anyway, but he really hoped she wasn't hoping to try and resurrect it. He could think of several ways that would end and all of them were bad.

It didn't make him any easier when she leaned into him and rested her chin on his shoulder.

"Are you all right, Harry? You seem really wound up lately."

"I'm fine," he muttered uncomfortably.

"Don't mind Mum. She's been fussing ever since you and Ron went away at the end of term."

Harry frowned. "Why?"

Ginny giggled. "She thinks the two of you were up to something – fooling around with loose women probably."

He rolled his eyes. "Your mum's got an obsession with Ron and loose women!"

"Well, you can't blame her, can you, after last summer! He still won't tell us where he went all those times. But it wasn't him she was worried about – she was afraid he was going to lead you astray. She even went to see Sirius about it."

Harry turned sharply, dislodging her. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

Ginny's eyes were dancing with mirth. "Hasn't Sirius said anything to you? She was quite cross with him because he laughed and told her that he hoped you _were_ being led astray! I heard her telling Dad afterwards."

Well, that explained Sirius's assumptions about the nature of their break in Scotland! Harry supposed he should be grateful that neither he nor Mrs. Weasley had any idea of what was really happening.

"So, were you?"

Harry looked at Ginny. She was still looking amused, but there was curiosity in her eyes too.

"What – getting led astray by Ron?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, you could put it that way," he said dryly.

Much to his surprise, Ginny looked thoroughly delighted.

"Oooh, tell!" she demanded.

"Ginny!"

"Well, I need to know what Ron gets up to," she explained. "How else am I supposed to blackmail him?"

Harry gaped at her, for she sounded quite serious. "What do you mean, blackmail him?"

She gave him an old-fashioned look. "How else do you think I get my lovely brothers to take me seriously?" She hopped up and went to her dresser, opening a drawer and extracting something which she held up triumphantly – a tiny pair of lace panties. "These came from Percy's room – he knows Mum would throw a fit if she found out he was sneaking Penny in here at night, and he knows I have them. I'm waiting for a good moment to make use of the information."

Harry was aghast. "How on earth did you end up in Gryffindor?"

"It's all in how you do it," she told him knowledgeably, and she tucked the panties back in her drawer. "I'm not extorting money or anything like that! I use it to keep him off my back – you've no idea what a pain he can be to live with. He's horribly nosy and sanctimonious."

"Well if you think I'm giving you information to use against Ron, you can think again!"

"I suppose it would be a bit pointless, now that he's moved out," she agreed. "It would be nice to know what he gets up to though – just for educational purposes. Besides, I need to make sure he's not leading you astray in the wrong way." She tucked her hand into his arm, her face suddenly serious. "Nobody hurts my Harry Potter."

Harry felt uncomfortable at this. "Nobody's hurting me."

"Then why do you look so stressed? I saw you this morning, you know. You looked like you weren't sure if you were coming or going, and it _wasn't_ just because of Mum's growling. And you looked really upset when he walked off at dinner."

"I'm okay ...."

"He hasn't introduced you to any horrid hags who are trying to get their claws into you, has he?"

Harry managed a weak smile. "There aren't any women, really!"

She frowned. "Then what _were_ you doing in Scotland?"

He rolled his eyes. Why was everyone so obsessed with what he did in Scotland? "We were hiking!"

"No, you weren't – you just said he was leading you astray!"

 _"Ginny ...."_

There was a sudden pause, and when Harry looked up he saw that her eyes were suddenly huge with realisation.

" _No!_ He never is! You aren't – are you? But ...."

"Ginny ...." he said weakly, not knowing what to say to her.

"But Harry – I thought you liked _girls!_ I mean ... you and I ... and you and Cho ... and ...." She flapped her hands helplessly.

"I do like girls! I think I must like both," he muttered.

"But – but _Ron?_ " She was convulsed with sudden giggles and clapped her hands over her mouth to smother them. "Oh Harry, I'm so sorry!" she snuffled around her fingers. "It's just – _Ron!_ "

"It's not that funny," Harry told her irritably. "You're only saying that because he's your brother!"

"No, I suppose it's not." She hiccuped another laugh and managed to get herself under control. "What – what do people think, though? I mean, _Sirius?_ Does he know?"

"No!" Harry told her sharply. "No one knows, except Hermione. And you, now. You mustn't tell anyone! It could make things really difficult for Ron and me if we were found out."

She nodded quickly. "Of course! People can be really funny about it, I know. Mum would have a litter of kittens because, you know, she thought Bill was like that at first."

" _Bill?_ " Harry boggled at the idea, for Bill had quite a reputation with women.

"Well, the curse-breakers are a funny lot and she got the idea that he was spending far too much time with one of his friends." The corner of Ginny's mouth twitched. "Personally, I'm surprised she wasn't more worried about Percy. I mean, don't you think he's the sort?"

"Apparently not, if you've got Penny's knickers in your drawer. Ginny ...."

"Alright, alright! I promise I won't tell anyone – your secret's safe with me. It just seems so ... so strange. I mean - _Ron!_ "

She dissolved into giggles again and Harry, feeling very put out, got up and left the room.

He barely reached the lower landing when he was suddenly seized and dragged into the nearest bedroom - Percy's, to judge by the pernickety neatness of it. The door was shut and a silencing spell in place before Harry could open his mouth to remonstrate with his attacker.

It was Ron of course and he was furious.

"What the fuck were you doing in my sister's room?" he raged.

Harry stared at him in disbelief. "What are you going on about, you pillock?"

"You! Ginny! Hiding out in her room when my back's turned - "

Oh, this was the absolute limit.

"What do you mean, _hiding out?_ " demanded Harry. "You make it sound like I went in there to shag her or something!"

There was a sudden ear-splitting _crack_ as a mirror on the wall behind Harry broke under the pressure of Ron's anger.

"Get a grip!" he snapped at the redhead, appalled. "We were just _talking_. I didn't lay a finger on her!"

"Yeah, right!" For a Weasley, Ron really had the Malfoyesque sneer down pat. "She's had the hots for you for years!"

Harry couldn't decide if this was brotherly protectiveness or rampant jealousy, or some unholy mix of the two. From the look on Ron's face, he couldn't decide either - and didn't care.

"So what? I'm not interested in Ginny! I'm with you now, for crying out loud - it's not like I'm looking for women to screw!"

"Sure about that, are you? After all, it's not like she wouldn't be willing - "

"Don't you dare start slagging off your sister just because _you're_ in a bad mood!" Any minute now Harry's own anger was going to start inflicting damage too. "For that matter, don't think you can take your temper out on me!"

He took his wand out of his pocket, intending to remove the silencing charm, only for Ron to seize his wrist in a painfully tight grip.

"You're not walking out on me!"

There was a brief struggle and Harry wrenched his hand. There was an odd sort of crunching sound and he felt a sickening twist of pain. He took a couple of steps back, breathing heavily and massaging his wrist, glaring at Ron. Then before he had even consciously thought about what he was doing, he Apparated out of the Burrow and back to Sirius's house.

xXx

Molly Weasley was just starting to clear up the coffee cups.

"I'll put the kettle on for a cup of tea, shall I?" she asked the men cheerfully.

"Let me give you a hand, Molly." Sirius followed her into the kitchen but he had barely lifted the kettle from its hook over the range when an owl swooped through the door and dropped a letter on his head.

"What on earth!"

"That's the Ministry seal!" Molly remarked, surprised.

"What on earth could they want that warrants an owl at this time of night?" Sirius ripped the envelope open and unfolded the single sheet of parchment that was inside. "Dear Mr. Black, It has come to our attention - _what!_ "

Molly stared at him as he charged through the kitchen door to the bottom of the stairs.

"Harry! Harry, where are you?"

"He was here a few minutes ago," Ginny called down the stairs, surprised. She came to the lower landing and looked down at Sirius. "I thought he was with you?"

"Dammit! Sorry, Ginny, not your fault …."

Lupin had come into the kitchen when he returned.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

Sirius thrust the letter into his hands. "Instance of unlicensed Apparition by a minor. I'm summoned with Harry to a hearing in two days time."

"What on earth would Harry do that for?" Molly wanted to know. "He knows where the Floo is, after all …."

"He's probably at home," Lupin said in a calm tone.

"Who knows?" Sirius said, exasperated. "Dammit, what did he have to go and do that for, barely a week away from getting his licence? Look, Molly, I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to go and find him."

"Of course, Sirius! I'm sure it was an accident, though - Harry's a sensible boy."

"Need a hand?" asked Lupin.

"Only to bury the body!" was Sirius's testy retort and he Apparated away.

xXx

Harry was storming up and down in his room in such an obvious fury that Sirius stopped short at the doorway, surprised. He knew his godson had a temper, but generally he hung onto it better than this.

"Congratulations," he commented when Harry caught sight of him and came to a halt. He held up the letter. "We have a hearing at the Ministry the day after tomorrow."

Harry responded with a startling stream of invective.

"If you say so." He watched the teenager fume for a minute or two, then asked, "What happened?"

"Ron happened!" Harry exploded. "He's the biggest dickhead in history and if I'd stayed there another minute I'd have thrown him out of the window!"

Sirius suddenly wished that Lupin was there after all. He wasn't ready for a _calm_ conversation about Harry's situation, let alone a tempestuous lovers' spat.

"Do I want to know what he did?" he asked cautiously.

"He accused me of messing with Ginny! Just because I was talking to her in her room - "

Sirius's eyebrows went up before he could stop himself; of course he'd noticed Harry sloping off quietly with Ginny. "Were you?"

Harry glared at him. " _No!_ We were just _talking!_ She was telling me about working for the twins!"

"Okay, okay! Obviously Ron didn't think so, though."

"That's because Ron's an insufferable prat!" Harry snapped.

Sirius noticed him cradling his right hand. "What have you done to your hand?"

Harry promptly stuffed it into his pocket, but not without flinching and turning a delicate shade of green. "Nothing …."

"Let me see, Harry!"

It took an argument, but eventually Harry let Sirius examine his wrist. It was painfully swollen and Ron's finger-marks were livid, like an ugly bracelet. Any humour he might have been inclined to feel at the situation promptly drained out of the older man.

"Can you rotate it?" he asked grimly.

Harry tried, but hissed in pain. "Not really …."

"Great. It looks like he's broken it for you."

"It's not Ron's fault," Harry said reflexively.

Sirius stared at him. "Don't be stupid, Harry! You can count his fingers from those marks."

"It's my fault for pulling my hand away too fast!"

"And what was he doing, grabbing hold of you like that in the first place? Were you fighting?"

No reply.

"Well, we're going to have to make a trip to St. Mungo's now. There's not much I can do if it's broken, especially as it's your wand hand." Sirius sighed. "I'd better owl Remus a note, so he knows where we are. Sunday night - we'll probably be there for hours."

xXx

In the event they were lucky and returned just after midnight. Lupin was still awake and sitting in one of the armchairs in the living room, reading a book. He looked up when they stepped out of the Floo and his eyes went at once to Harry's hand, which was strapped up.

"Not a break after all," Sirius said wearily, seeing his expression. "Just a very bad sprain." He turned to Harry. "You'd better get to bed after that potion they gave you."

Harry nodded and left the room without a word. Sirius waited until he heard the youth reach the top of the stairs, then he turned back to Lupin.

"Ron was here an hour or so ago," the other man said before he could speak. "He looked a bit upset."

"A bit upset! He damn near broke Harry's wrist for him!"

"Yes, I got the impression they'd had a row. Sit down, Sirius - you look ready to drop." Lupin got up and went to a small cabinet behind the door, where they kept all the alcohol locked away. He found a couple of glasses and started to pour.

Sirius fell into the other armchair and let his head fall back against the cushions. "All in all, it's been a really fantastic day," he commented sourly.

Lupin handed him a shot of Firewhiskey. "I take it they had a fight?"

"Yes." Sirius took a swig of the drink and coughed slightly as the vapour hit the back of his throat. "Supposedly about Harry making up to Ginny. According to Harry, Ron was overdoing the protective older brother act."

"And reading between the lines …?"

"I don't even want to go there. Take a look at Harry's wrist tomorrow, if he'll let you."

Lupin frowned thoughtfully into his own glass as he sat down. "I hate to say this," he said at length, "but young men _do_ fight, even when there isn't a relationship complicating things. Granted, it's usually more a black eye and bloody nose kind of fight, but a damaged wrist isn't exactly outside the norm. If you hadn't known about the pair of them, I don't suppose you'd have done much more than laugh, would you?"

"I don't know about that," Sirius objected.

"Oh, come on! I seem to recall you breaking James's nose for him on one memorable occasion."

"Yes, but – "

"But nothing. You had a drastic falling out over some girl, beat the living daylights out of each other, then jointly decided that she wasn't worth it after all. I was there!"

Sirius snorted but seemed disinclined to argue. "He's as surly as a bear with a sore head too … but I suppose you're going to remind me that he's in pain and upset, aren't you?"

Lupin smiled. "You're learning, Padfoot."

xXx

It was nearly eleven o'clock when Hermione dropped out of the Floo after a visit to her parents. The student house was quiet as she walked through to the kitchen to get herself a drink before she went to bed.

It was dark in there; she muttered " _Lumos!_ " to the lamps and let out a cry of surprise when the lights flared up to reveal Ron sitting alone there in the dark, pale-faced and staring blankly at the battered pine table.

"Ron! For heaven's sake - ! What are you doing, sitting around with no lights on? You nearly gave me heart failure!"

Then he looked up and Hermione's remonstrations dried up at his expression. He had the appalled look of a small child after some disaster.

 _Oh no_ , she thought wearily, for she had seen that look once or twice before in the last couple of years and it had "Harry" written all over it. Then she felt guilty for not being more supportive. She was trying to help them, she really was, but every once in a while she secretly wished that they would just get on with it and leave her out of the equation. It wasn't like she was a trained counsellor after all, and it never seemed to occur to either of them that she too might be struggling a little with this new relationship between the pair of them. In fact, in a dark, secret corner of her heart she had been more than a little hurt when it first became obvious what was going on ... especially when Ron had been so difficult and moody the year before and they'd all quarrelled so much. Then this had happened and she'd promised them secrecy, but pretty soon Hermione had found it too much to cope with. They would never know it, but in her desperation she had been driven to speak privately to her mother about it all; it wasn't as if she broke her word lightly, but if she hadn't talked to _someone_ she felt she would have gone mad under the pressure.

It didn't help that it always seemed to be Ron who unburdened himself to her. Harry was very reserved, almost frighteningly so, but Ron, having been raised in a large family, was the more emotional of the two and Hermione had the rather depressing idea that she reminded him of his mother. It would certainly explain a lot.

"What's happened?" she asked now, suppressing a sigh. "You should be in bed, you know," she added. She walked past the kitchen table into the work area and set the kettle on the range. This had the look of a "tea" situation. "We've got an early start in the morning."

As usual, Ron simply ignored most of what she was saying; it was something Hermione had got used to over the years.

"I've done something really stupid," he said in a bleak voice.

 _Again?_ a treacherous little voice whispered in her head. She scolded it into silence and put on her most patient face. "What do you mean?"

"I hurt Harry."

Well, that was nicely comprehensive. Hermione abandoned patience almost at once, as she knew from experience that they would be there for hours if she let him tell it in his own way.

"Ron, it's been a long day and I'm tired. What have you done exactly?"

"We ... we had a row and I grabbed his arm. I think I broke it."

Hermione stared. "What do you mean, you _think_ you broke it?" she said after a moment. "You would have heard it break if you had!"

Ron shook his head impatiently. "Not his arm – I mean his wrist. I grabbed it and he twisted and I didn't mean to but I held onto him even tighter and there was this sort of crunch." He shuddered. "He Apparated out of the house but when I got there later Lupin said he'd gone to St. Mungo's with Sirius – "

The kettle whistled, making them both jump, and Hermione quickly made the tea, whisking the two mugs over to the table with her wand.

"You're not making much sense," she told him, but in a gentler tone. "Start from the beginning. Where were you this evening?"

So Ron told her all about his conversation with Harry that afternoon, dinner at the Burrow and the quarrel over Ginny. Although she experienced a strong urge to shake the teeth out of his head for behaving like such an idiot about Harry and Ginny, Hermione managed to keep silent until the end.

"When did you go to Sirius's house?" she asked when he'd finished.

"About half an hour ago. I didn't go immediately because I was so - "

"They're probably still at St. Mungo's then," she interrupted. "It can take forever to get anything sorted out there at the weekend. That's that, then. You'll have to wait until tomorrow evening to sort this mess out."

Ron looked horrified. "Tomorrow _evening?_ But - "

"Ron, we start training first thing tomorrow! You can't sit around all night waiting for Harry to get back from the hospital and you can't bunk off your first day at work just because you've had a row with him! Besides, it can't be so very bad or Sirius would have come after you with a meat cleaver. You know what he's like about Harry."

"Oh God …." moaned Ron and he buried his head in his arms. "Do you think Harry told Sirius what happened?"

Hermione stared at him in exasperation. Right now, the secrecy of their relationship didn't seem to her to be the most important detail.

"I'm sure he had to tell him _something_. But aren't you missing the point?"

"What do you mean?"

"Ron!" she snapped. "You just inflicted a serious injury on Harry, all because you couldn't manage your rotten temper! Muggles lock people away for that kind of thing, you know - they call it _domestic violence_. What were you thinking of, for heaven's sake? Just because Harry isn't a girl doesn't mean you can hit him whenever the two of you fall out!"

Ron's head shot up, his face full of indignation - and the beginnings of apprehension. "I didn't do it deliberately!"

Hermione made an exasperated sound in her throat. "It doesn't matter if did or not, don't you see? If you can't control yourself, you're going to end up in a lot of trouble - not to mention probably losing Harry altogether. He'd be mad to stand for that kind of treatment!"

"But I didn't … I wasn't _trying_ to hurt him! He was walking away from me and I just grabbed his arm - it was a mistake!"

"Oh, _Ron_ …." Hermione sighed. "Why in the world did you have to get into a quarrel with him anyway? And over Ginny? How silly is that? This is _Harry_ we're talking about - since when has he been the kind of person to two-time anyone, let alone you?"

"I dunno," he muttered sullenly.

"He's already told you that he wants to be with you - what more do you want?"

"I dunno," he said again, and he began to pick at the handle of his mug restlessly. "It's just … he obviously likes girls and girls like him. So why the hell would he choose to be with me?"

Some might have found this statement romantic. Hermione, who knew him better, merely found it annoying and pathetic.

"Oh honestly, Ron. If you can't answer that for yourself, then I certainly can't answer it for you! But I'll tell you this much - if you can't get your jealousy and your temper under control, you'll lose a lot more than just Harry."

"I'm not jealous!" he protested, but it sounded rather feeble.

"Yes, you are," she retorted bluntly. "You've always been jealous and it's past time you grew out of it. It's not remotely attractive, in fact it's off-putting. How do you think Harry felt this evening when you accused him of being with Ginny behind your back? He probably thinks you don't trust him now and he'd be right, wouldn't he?"

This statement was greeted with a sulky silence. Tired and fed up, Hermione finished her tea and got up from the table.

"I'm going to bed," she told him and when this came out sounding rather heartless she couldn't bring herself to feel the least bit sorry for it. "I suggest you do the same. And tomorrow you'd better be prepared to do some serious apologising. After all, it's not like Harry can be bought off with chocolates and promises - he knows you too well."

And she left him there, sitting in the dark once more.


	4. Monday 27th July

Thanks to the healing potion the medics at St. Mungo's had given him, Harry slept late the following morning, finally crawling out of bed at nearly midday. His head was fuzzy and his stomach empty; he took a shower, dressed and stumbled into the kitchen, feeling unaccountably grumpy and wondering what day it was.

At least his wrist was healed, although he still had a ring of greening bruises around it. But being raised as a Muggle had some odd side-effects; the wrist might _feel_ fine, but his brain was still convinced that it would be painful for at least a week and he kept having to remind himself that it didn't need to be pampered.

He was chewing unenthusiastically on a slice of toast when Sirius walked into the kitchen.

"Morning," his godfather said genially. "Want a cup of tea?"

"'Kay," Harry mumbled ungraciously.

"How's the wrist?"

Harry held it up and rotated it in the air.

"Good. And your temper?"

Harry glared.

"About as I expected then." Sirius tapped the teapot with his wand and steam began to trickle out of the spout. "Got any plans for today?"

"Yeah," Harry said, swallowing a mouthful of half-chewed toast. "I thought I might nip up to London and rearrange Ron's face. What d'you reckon?"

Sirius grinned. "It's an idea … but you'll have to leave it until this evening. He started training this morning, remember?"

It felt like his stomach had suddenly dropped a couple of inches. "I forgot," he muttered and glowered into his tea as though the liquid was directly responsible.

Sirius let him brood while he drank his own tea, then he washed out his mug and clapped Harry affectionately on the shoulder.

"Drink up! We're going for a walk."

xXx

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

It was a beautiful day; blazing sunshine, a light breeze, birds singing and butterflies flitting …. Harry hated it on principle. Nothing should be this cheerful when he was feeling so out of sorts, and it was an added insult that Sirius should be whistling perkily as they walked through the meandering country lane that was the 'main street' of Godric's Hollow.

"This is a Muggle village, isn't it?" Harry asked at length.

"Yep. The only all-wizard community in Britain is Hogsmeade."

"Do the neighbours take much notice of you?"

Sirius shook his head. "They ignore us. That's partly because the house is charmed to escape notice, of course, but to be honest I don't think they find us very interesting." He flashed Harry a quick grin. "Remus goes out of his way to look boring, just in case."

Harry wasn't sure he believed this, as he had always been led to believe that villages were close-knit communities who kept a sharp eye on each other and doubly so on strangers. But he didn't feel like arguing the point with his godfather, so he dropped it.

"Where are we going?"

"Patience."

Harry snorted. _Patience_ and _Sirius_ just didn't go together in the same sentence.

"We're here."

They stopped and Harry looked around blankly.

"It's a field," he said.

"No, it isn't. Look again."

"I don't get it. It's a _field_ \- grass, flowers, hedges. What am I supposed to be looking for?"

Sirius nodded as thought Harry had just confirmed something he was looking for. "Stick your hand out."

He glowered at the older man, but did as he was told and instantly felt something like a mild electric shock running up his arm. The field melted away in front of him to reveal a very overgrown driveway to a house. Old, whitened gravel showed between tall tufts of grass and weeds and to one side, standing limply open against a high retaining bank, was a broken-down five bar gate. Trees, beeches and sycamores mainly, overhung the drive, obscuring most of the property from view.

"Do you know where we are now?" asked Sirius, watching him narrowly.

Harry's throat was suddenly dry. "This is Mum and Dad's house. Isn't it?"

"Was," and he fancied he heard a slight catch in Sirius's voice. "It's been under repelling charms and preservation spells for fifteen years or more. According to Remus, the Unspeakables spent several years trying to cleanse the site of curse residue, but they couldn't make any headway with it and in the end they simply closed the site off so that the locals couldn't hurt themselves by accident. Shall we go in?"

Harry wasn't sure he wanted to. But he followed Sirius slowly up the driveway, staring at the jumble of Muggle and magical plants that were running amok in the abandoned garden. The place was alive with the sound of grasshoppers and other insects. Bees were making the most of the huge, mysterious blooms that weighed down some of the magical plants and Harry spotted an alarmingly large anthill in the undergrowth.

Sirius pushed his way through the head-high vegetation, wearing a pained expression. "Lily would have hated to see it like this," he commented. "She loved her garden – kept it looking beautiful. Remus helped her and James to dig the borders ...."

Harry didn't know what to say to this. It wasn't as if he could remember this place, after all. Then everything abruptly changed and he forgot what Sirius was saying. They had stepped out of the garden into a space that had once held a small cottage.

All insect sounds died. Not a plant grew in the devastated ruins.

There was rubble everywhere – piles and piles of it and yet, strangely, not enough to account for a whole house. Laid out before them were old concrete foundations and a few standing walls. Two of them had been stone outer walls, one with a doorway and half the frame of a window in it, and the others were what was left of the internal structure. Nothing above first floor height remained, although there were a couple of fallen joists lying in the middle of the building. The place was shrouded in heavy charms, mostly of the Muggle-repelling _notice-me-not_ variety, but underneath everything lay the sour taint of a powerful curse which made Harry's skin crawl and the scar on his forehead itch.

Sirius stopped in front of the door and a muscle in his cheek began to twitch in agitation as he stared at the ruins.

"So," he said after a moment, "this is where you were born. The land still belongs to you, by the way, but I don't suppose it'll be worth much unless the curse residue can be removed."

"I wouldn't sell it anyway," Harry said at once.

"That's your decision."

There was a long uneasy silence between them as they studied what was left of Harry's family home.

"Is this how it was when you ... found us?" Harry asked eventually.

"Sort of," Sirius replied. "There was a lot more wreckage – stacks of stuff was taken away for examination and dumped in the store rooms at the Auror Facility." His jaw clenched. "Your mum and dad ... well, I found them in the back garden." He waved a hand vaguely in that direction. "We – we think Voldemort got into the house by this door. That would be like him – no skulking in by back doors or open windows for him, oh no, he'd have to come to the front door and announce himself ...."

It took Sirius a moment or two to calm himself and Harry kept his eyes respectfully averted. Something in his chest was growing tight.

"So he came to this door and James challenged him," his godfather continued after a moment.

"Lily, take Harry and go – it's him," Harry murmured. "I'll hold him off."

"What?" Sirius was staring at him, wide-eyed.

Harry flushed, embarrassed. "I heard him once – my dad," he explained uncomfortably. "When I get near Dementors ... well, that's what I hear. My dad telling my mum to run and her pleading with Voldemort."

He thought he'd already told Sirius this at some point, but from the horrified look in his godfather's eyes he obviously hadn't. He quickly changed the subject.

"If my dad challenged him here, why did you find him in the back garden?"

"I'm not sure," Sirius admitted, "but I think the backlash from the curse blew a lot of things out of the house – there was a mountain of stuff in the back garden, broken furniture, glass, you name it. And we only _think_ that James challenged Voldemort by the front door. We don't know exactly where he killed him. As for you ... at first we couldn't find you. I was sure you were dead somewhere under all the rubble, but then Hagrid found you here – you were practically on the front step, but the door had blown out at an angle and you were hidden underneath it." Sirius's voice wobbled for a moment, then steadied again. "You were so quiet and that just wasn't like you – you were a noisy baby, always babbling and laughing, but when Hagrid picked you up you looked at us so solemnly and never made a sound. And you were covered in bruises and had that terrible cut on your forehead ...."

Harry didn't really know what to say to this or to the emotion he heard in Sirius's voice, so he just nodded and looked up at the walls of his family's home.

"Hard to imagine what it must have looked like," he said at length.

"I don't think I have any pictures. We had to be careful if we took photos not to show the house or grounds in them. Still ...." Sirius looked thoughtfully up at the shell of the building, then stepped through the doorway into the main part. After a moment Harry followed him and watched as he raised his wand. "Lily had her sitting room here."

The walls suddenly began to grow upwards, the gaps in the stonework and damaged surfaces mending themselves, lightening and becoming whole once more. Plaster and then wallpaper appeared on the inside of the walls, bright curtains at the windows, a polished wooden floor and soft rugs beneath their feet. There were bookcases, a sofa, a low coffee table, a rocking chair. A copy of the _Daily Prophet_ lay on the table and a brightly coloured child's toy was half hidden under an armchair; a man's thick woollen robe was tossed carelessly over the arm of the sofa.

Harry didn't move, not wanting to disturb the illusion his godfather had cast, but his eyes tracked over the room hungrily, looking for something, _anything_ , that might trigger one of those fugitive memories that so far only the Dementors seemed able to access. He had been fifteen months old when his parents died – surely something more than their screams should be there?

But nothing seemed familiar, nothing triggered even the vaguest hint of a recollection, not even when Sirius banished this illusion and produced another, of his nursery with its pale blue theme and teddy wallpaper and the moon and stars mobile hanging over his carved wooden cradle.

"I don't remember any of it," Harry said around the lump in his throat, for in his heart he wanted so badly to have more than just a collection of photographs and other people's memories to hang on to.

"You were very young," Sirius said with a sigh, and he banished the illusions with another wave of his wand.

They were both very quiet when they walked back to Sirius and Remus's house.

xXx

Harry had dinner with Sirius and Remus that evening, although his heart wasn't entirely in it. He needed to go and see Ron and straighten out their argument if he could, but he felt oddly reluctant to do it. His mood had been off all day, starting with bitterly annoyed and moving rapidly into a kind of gloom. It hadn't improved by the time Remus arrived home from the Auror Facility to join them in a dinner of lamb cutlets, potatoes and sliced green beans.

"Razor beans," Remus commented wryly as he chewed. The beans had come from his own plot. "You wouldn't think they could turn tough so early, would you?"

"Lack of water," Sirius replied. "We're going to have a drought if this heat carries on."

Harry wondered if he too would discuss banalities over dinner when he reached their age. He stabbed at his potatoes moodily.

"Making everyone bad-tempered as well," Remus agreed. "It's too hot in the training rooms – that's the first starting class I've taken where they weren't all bright and eager when they arrived. Not that I can blame anyone for sounding a bit sceptical about the oath, but I would think outright cynicism could wait a month or two."

Sirius snorted. "Pledging loyalty to the Ministry is asking a lot of anyone these days."

"The Ministry as an institution isn't the problem," Remus said mildly. "It's the incumbent in the office who's the problem." He shrugged. "But we get the Ministers we deserve, I suppose."

"How did Ron and Hermione get on today?" asked Sirius, with one eye on Harry.

"As well as the others. Hermione has a problem with learning anything that doesn't come out of a book, mind you, but I think she'll settle down quickly enough. In that respect Ron will probably have the edge over her, though. She's not a person who works easily on her instincts, whereas he has no problem in trusting his instincts at all. It'll be interesting to see what kind of a role his Sight plays. Moody tells me there was a kick-up over his application – the Department of Mysteries wanted him, of course, and they're still not happy about him training as an Auror."

Harry's ears perked up at that. He had no idea that the Unspeakables had been interested in Ron – why hadn't his friend told him so? And why had he been so set on becoming an Auror if he had another, probably better-tailored opportunity? The Department of Mysteries didn't take people on very often; the last had been a girl in the year ahead of them at school who had been born an Animagus.

"Which reminds me," Remus said, and he rummaged in the pocket of his robe, pulling out a small leather-bound book which he handed to Harry. "You might want to read that in preparation for next week," he told the teenager. "Of course, strictly speaking you shouldn't have it yet, but there's no reason why you should be _entirely_ behind the others when you arrive."

Harry turned it over in his hands and was surprised into a laugh. "There's an Auror handbook?"

"Certainly." Remus's eyes were twinkling. "You'll find the section on bodily hygiene particularly useful."

 _"Hygiene?"_

"Vital if you're not to be sniffed out by the enemy's guard-crups," Sirius told him gravely.

"I'll bear that in mind." Harry was assailed by a sudden, strange vision of Voldemort with half a dozen small, Jack Russell-like creatures on leashes. It was beyond weird. "Wouldn't Death Eaters prefer something a bit bigger and meaner?"

"You've obviously never been bitten by a crup," was Sirius's dry response, and from the wicked look on Remus's face there was clearly a story to be told there, but Harry held back from asking, knowing that he would probably better appreciate it another time.

After dinner, he left the handbook on his bedside table with a firm resolve to read it later. It was tempting to sit down and start reading it now, but Harry knew that he couldn't put off this conversation with Ron. Too much time and it would fester into something unmanageable. So he reluctantly pulled on a robe and Floo'd himself to the student house.

There were voices in the kitchen when he arrived; Hermione, Seamus and Neville by the sound of things. Harry didn't hear Ron, though, and with relief he quietly slipped up the stairs without announcing himself. He didn't particularly want to deal with any of them just yet; maybe later, when this business with Ron was behind him. _If_ , of course, they were able to put it behind them somehow.

Ron's door was shut when he reached the top of the attic stairs. Harry grimaced, but knocked and quickly opened it without waiting - and found himself at the end of Ron's wand. He raised his hands, giving the redhead a half-startled, half-ironic look.

"Only me. Who were you expecting?"

The wand dropped and Ron pushed the door shut behind him. "Not you, that's for sure."

"Why not?"

They looked at each other. It seemed to Harry that he _ought_ to be feeling at least a little of the outrage and resentment towards Ron that he'd experienced the previous evening, but instead all he could see was the anxiety in the blue eyes that belied the stubborn set of his jaw.

"I wasn't sure you were still talking to me," Ron said after a while. His ears were turning red despite his semi-defiant expression.

"If you'd asked me that last night, I wouldn't have been." Harry extended his hand so that Ron could see the greenish bruises still decorating his wrist. "Four hours in St. Mungo's is a bit much for anyone."

Ron's face seemed to crumple. "Dammit, Harry! I didn't mean to - "

"I know you didn't, you stupid git! It was as much my fault as yours." Harry looked a little wry. "Though if you start on me about Ginny again, I'll bust more than just your wrist. Like I'm really going to take the first opportunity to drag her under the table or something! Like I'd do that with _anyone_."

"Yeah, I know, it's stupid," Ron mumbled. "It's just … I was wound up when you left here in the afternoon, then my mum was winding me up all evening and by the time you arrived …."

Harry found that he didn't have the heart to continue with this. It had been a misunderstanding and that was the end of it.

"Forget it," he said, shrugging.

Ron still looked uncertain. "Are you sure?"

 _"Forget it,"_ Harry repeated, then he grinned. "Aren't you going to tell me about your day instead, _dear?_ "

Ron snorted, very relieved. "Only if you tell me about yours, _my sweet_. But that can wait until we've had dinner."

"I've already eaten."

"Yeah, so have I," Ron said meaningfully.

"What - oh!" Harry reddened. " _Dinner_ , right, got you now."

Ron rolled his eyes. "You'll be the death of me yet, Potter."

xXx

"So they've got us doing martial arts," Ron said, running his fingers lightly over Harry's bare shoulder. "Or they will have, once they're convinced none of us are going to break a neck at first try. All we did were warm-up exercises today and that was embarrassing enough."

"What kind of martial arts?" Harry asked curiously.

"Something that looks bloody painful for the person on the receiving end." Ron raised a brow at Harry. "What I want to know is how you survived getting in the sack with Cho Chang, mate, because she is _lethal_ at this stuff. She was throwing the instructor around like an old cushion."

Harry grinned. "She must have been unusually gentle with me."

"Hm." Ron let that go. "They spent most of the day showing us round, though. There's more to it than I realised - they even have this huge laboratory underground where they test stuff. I thought we'd never drag Hermione out of there. And there's a huge complex full of nothing but different cells and interview rooms. Moody showed us the one they're keeping for Voldemort." He swallowed slightly. "Tell you what, I don't ever want to end up in _any_ of them, let alone that one."

"Talk about living in hopes," Harry commented, trying to lighten the tone. "Do they seriously think they'll ever bring him in for questioning?"

"Moody seemed pretty hopeful."

"Moody would. What other stuff did you do?"

"Mostly they outlined the course we'll be following." Ron hesitated, looking thoughtful. "Lupin said one of the first things we'll be doing is learning to face fear."

"Meaning?"

"I'm not sure. He said everyone has things they're particularly afraid of and we had to be taught to work in spite of it." He looked at Harry resignedly. "Which means spiders, I suppose."

Harry smiled faintly. "And Dementors."

"But you don't have a problem with Dementors anymore, do you?"

"I wouldn't go that far." True, he had learned to defend himself against them, but the whole point of Dementors was that they targeted your weakest spots. Besides, over the last few years Harry had acquired a whole new host of bad memories to augment the original horror of his parents' murders.

"Anyway, they gave us a handbook and it's all laid out in there, including how long it's likely to take before they'll consider us to be full Aurors, which is - "

"Roughly three or four years," Harry finished for him. "I know, Sirius told me before I applied. Which reminds me - why didn't you tell me the Unspeakables wanted you?"

Ron shrugged. "Because I didn't want them, end of story."

Harry blinked. "But it's a big honour to be asked to join them, isn't it?"

"Depends on what you call an honour. They were only interested in me because I have the Sight and frankly, Harry, I can think of better ways to give myself a permanent migraine."

"I didn't think of that." Harry gave him a concerned look. "How is that, anyway? Are you still picking up images everywhere?"

"It's not so bad at the moment. Mirrors are still a pain, but I can avoid them." Ron grimaced, then gave Harry a sly smile. "Of course, a lot of sex helps."

Harry snorted a laugh. "Yeah, I'll bet! But if that's a hint for a replay, I think you're out of luck." He checked his watch. "Yep. Sorry, but I need to get back a bit earlier tonight. I have a hearing at the Ministry in the morning."

Ron frowned. "What for?"

Harry gave him a look. "I Apparated home last night, remember? They want to formally slap my wrist and tell Sirius what a bad guardian he is."

A grin dawned on Ron's face. "Sounds like it could be a good laugh at that."


	5. Tuesday 28th July

"What do you mean, _am I Mr. Vernon Dursley?_ " Sirius demanded of the minor official behind the desk at the Office for the Regulation of Under-Age Wizardry Division. "Do I look like an overweight, middle-aged, bigoted Muggle?"

Harry managed to stifle a laugh but was unsuccessful in his attempt to look as if he was unconnected to the scene unfolding in front of him.

"It says here that Mr. Harry Potter is the ward of one Vernon Dursley," the official bleated, leaning back in his seat to get away from Harry's looming godfather.

"Vernon Dursley wouldn't recognise an instance of Apparition, unlicensed or otherwise, if someone splinched themselves sideways in his anal orifice!" Sirius roared. "Check your paperwork, you buffoon! The name's _Black,_ Sirius Black, and I've been Harry's legal guardian for over a year. How else would your office know where to owl this summons to in the first place?"

Clearly, the only thing this wizard knew was that Sirius Black had once been convicted of the murder of a dozen Muggles with a single curse. Harry got the impression that if he could, he would have hidden under his desk rather than deal with his godfather face to face.

"And this," a familiar, very dry voice said in the background, "is the front desk of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's Office for the Regulation of Under-Age Wizardry which, regrettably, some of you will already be familiar with."

It was Remus Lupin, complete with a little gaggle of trainee Aurors, including Ron and Hermione who were grinning at Harry.

Lupin surveyed the scene in front of him for a moment, before adding, "Of course, this office does tend to see its fair share of, ah, _heated_ confrontations. Good morning, Auror Black."

Sirius snorted witheringly. "Is it?" he demanded.

"Moving swiftly on ...." Lupin said disapprovingly, and he led the new Aurors away.

Sirius returned to his intimidation of the desk clerk.

"I strongly suggest you get your documentation in order pronto," he told him, planting a finger in the middle of the wizard's chest. "My ward and I have an appointment with this office in five minutes' time and I don't particularly feel like fielding a reprimand for lateness just because _your_ operations are eighteen months behind schedule. _Am I clearly understood?_ "

He turned and stormed off to the hard wooden seats a few feet away where Harry had already retired, and threw himself into one of them.

"Honestly," he said in disgust, "I don't know where they find these people."

"Job Centre?" Harry suggested. Sirius looked at him blankly. "It's a place where Muggles - oh, forget it."

Appointment notwithstanding, they were forced to wait considerably longer than five minutes for their hearing. To Sirius's intense annoyance, a number of other frazzled-looking parents with youngsters came and went in the hour that followed, while he and Harry waited not-very-patiently. Twice he got up to harass the alarmed young clerk, and by the time they were finally called for their hearing Harry was beginning to wonder which of them would be reprimanded after all.

The atmosphere, when they were ushered into the office, was deceptively informal. It was just an office, rather small, piled high with books, papers and overflowing 'in' and 'out' trays. The woman sitting behind the desk, however, was square-jawed with a severely bobbed haircut and a monocle; the name-plate on the front of her desk read "Madam A. Bones, Inquisitor".

Harry wondered if she was any relation of Susan Bones, his Hufflepuff year-mate at school.

She was leafing through a thick file and her eyes, when she raised them to study Harry, were very stern.

"Your ward would appear to have quite a history with us, Mr. Black," she remarked dryly.

Sirius stiffened. "I'm aware of only two other occasions when Harry has received warnings from this office."

 _"Only,"_ she said witheringly.

Harry flushed.

"Neither led to hearings," Sirius pointed out, annoyed. "The first was merely a warning and the second was dismissed by the Minister himself."

Madam Bones raised a brow. "On the contrary, the matter of Mr. Potter's aunt remains on file."

That spiteful old snake, Fudge! Harry had to remind himself that assassination of a serving Minister would probably get him more than just a term in Azkaban; and from the look of things, Sirius was thinking along the same lines.

"A thirteen-year-old boy can hardly be held accountable under circumstances of extreme provocation - "

"Nevertheless, Mr. Black, you have to admit that taken cumulatively these incidents look rather bad. And in addition, I note that there were a number of smaller incidents registered during Mr. Potter's childhood - including at least one of unlicensed Apparition."

Harry couldn't think what she was talking about for a moment - then he remembered. "Oh! You mean the time I ended up on the school roof when Dudley was chasing me?" He looked at Madam Bones indignantly. "I was only eight and I didn't even know how I did it! I didn't know I was a wizard then!"

"That's quite beside the point," Madam Bones said sharply. "Your guardians knew, even if you didn't."

"You can't blame Harry for the actions of his Muggle relatives!" Sirius snapped.

"A great many allowances seem to be made for Mr. Potter on account of his upbringing," was the frosty reply. "Remarkable, when you consider that we very rarely have cause to reprimand other Muggle-born children."

"So you're going to punish him now just because his notoriety led to him being treated differently in the past?"

Madam Bones adjusted her monocle and fixed Sirius with an icy glare. "No, Mr. Black, I am going to treat him exactly as he should always have been treated - and given what you have just said, it seems a little _nonsensical_ of you to expect me to do otherwise!"

Sirius sat back in his chair, looking furious. Madam Bones gave him one last, lingering look then, apparently reassured that she had successfully quelled him, she turned her attention back to his ward. Harry eyed the Inquisitor apprehensively.

"So," she said coolly, removing another sheet of paper from Harry's file. "We have one minor incident of Apparition during your childhood which would appear to have occurred through a combination of fright and ignorance and was therefore ignored by this office. Then there is the incident of Sunday 26th July. Ignorance cannot be an excuse on this occasion, Mr. Potter. What is your explanation?"

"I had a fight with a friend and hurt my wrist," Harry explained, hoping he didn't sound as sullen as he felt. "I Apparated home without really thinking - I didn't even realise what I'd done until I found myself in my bedroom. It wasn't intentional."

Madam Bones peered at him sharply. "You Apparated without thinking."

"Yes, ma'am," he muttered.

"Mr. Potter, I trust you are aware of the dangers of irrational Apparition?"

"Yes, ma'am - "

"You do realise that if you cannot demonstrate greater control of yourself, you will not be granted your licence in any case? Or you may have it revoked at a later date and be subjected to a twenty Galleon on-the-spot fine?"

"Yes," he sighed.

"Apparition is one of the most dangerous elements of personal magic a wizard may subject himself to, Mr. Potter, on a par with the Animagus transformation. There have been numerous instances where others of our magical brethren have suffered accidents, commonly known as _splinching,_ which, in spite of what you may have heard, cannot always be remedied."

Harry really didn't like the way she phrased that.

Madam Bones adjusted her monocle again, as if for emphasis. "Apparition is not for everyone, Mr. Potter, in spite of what you may have been told. It is no reflection upon a wizard's reputation to admit that he does not possess the skill to achieve it."

"Nevertheless, it's a skill Harry must achieve on Friday or he won't be able to take up his training post as an Auror on Monday," Sirius commented acidly.

"Indeed." The word dripped ice. "Then this incident is doubly unfortunate."

 _She's going to ban me,_ Harry realised, with dawning dismay. _I'm not going to be able to take my test and I won't be able to train -_

"The normal punishment for under-age, unlicensed Apparition, especially for one of your age group, Mr. Potter, is a year-long ban," Madam Bones said coolly, as if reading his mind. "I imagine you are aware of that."

"Yes, ma'am," he said numbly.

"On the other hand," she continued dryly, "there is the question of fairness and balance. Whilst it would be entirely appropriate to punish you with the full weight of the regulations, it could be argued that in causing you also to lose a position in your chosen career you would be punished above and beyond what the regulations allow for. It might even be considered an act of vindictiveness on the part of this office, given who you are. _That_ wand waves both ways." The monocled eye fixed repressively upon Sirius as she said this.

She continued: "Despite appearances, I am _not_ looking to make an example of a young man who has the misfortune to be famous. Nevertheless, it would be reprehensible of me indeed if I did not impose some manner of punishment befitting the seriousness of this offence."

Harry braced himself.

"I am therefore imposing a fine and a suspended sentence," Madam Bones stated, and Sirius breathed a sigh of relief that made her frown at him. "But let me make this quite clear, Mr. Potter – should you commit _any_ breach of the International Statute for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Wizardry within the next four days, or any breach of the regulations surrounding Apparition within the next full year, I _will_ enforce the year-long ban, in addition to any other measures this office deems appropriate. Is that clearly understood?"

"I suppose she was fair," Sirius remarked grudgingly as they made their way to the desk to pay Harry's fine, "but thirty Galleons! Pretty steep. Mind, there are some charming characters here who would have enjoyed making an example of you, so I suppose we're lucky it was Amelia Bones."

"I'm just glad I'll be able to take my test on Friday after all," Harry replied, relieved. Then he looked at Sirius, frowning slightly. "She didn't seem to like you much - do you know her?"

Sirius rubbed his ear, looking innocent. "I might have seen her once or twice when I was a kid …."

Harry began to grin. "How many times did you end up in that office?"

"Just a few. And it wasn't my fault, I was set up."

"Why didn't I think of that excuse?"

xXx

Harry spent the afternoon turning out his school trunk, deciding what he would keep and what he would throw away.

It wasn't nearly as easy as he had thought it would be; years of living in cramped conditions with intolerant relatives gave him the urge to simply throw out anything he wouldn't need again, but that would include nearly all his school textbooks and part of him didn't want to do that even though it was impractical to keep them. He also had a mountain of clothes and robes that seemed surplus to requirements.

When Sirius appeared in the doorway at four o'clock, bearing two mugs of tea, he found Harry sitting between two seemingly random piles and reluctantly scanning through a third heap of scrolls.

"For someone so nit-picky, you certainly know how to make a mess," he remarked, amused.

"I don't know what to get rid of!" Harry said, looking frazzled. "I _think_ I could get rid of my pre-OWL essays, but I don't really want to lose my NEWTs dissertations - "

"You definitely won't need anything prior to your NEWTs," Sirius told him firmly. "Burn that lot. If you really want to keep your dissertations, I've got a box in the study you can have to stash them in."

"Thanks," Harry sighed. "What about all the books?"

"Looks like you've still got all your early spellbooks - you could keep them, because they're good reference books and you never cover _everything_ in them, even in seven years. Get rid of the texts from Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, though."

"It's not like I need the Divination stuff with Ron around," Harry agreed, and he tossed those to one side. "I could get rid of the Gilderoy Lockhart set as well."

"Why did you keep them anyway?" Sirius picked up _Magical Me_ and flipped through it. "Oh, I _see!_ He signed them. How touching!"

"Give me that - !" Harry snatched it back and dumped all of the Lockhart books in a pile with his pre-NEWT papers. The photograph on the cover of the top volume looked hurt at this rejection, but he ignored it. "I could probably get rid of the Herbology and Astronomy books too - unless there's something in them I might need when I start training?"

"You'll get all new texts from us if you need them."

"What about Potions?"

They looked at each other and Sirius reluctantly picked up the top book. "Was this the NEWTs text?"

"Yeah - Snape wrote it."

"Much as I hate to say it, you should probably hang onto that one. He's the acknowledged foremost Potions Master in Europe and it could be useful." Sirius put it to one side. "Toss the DADA books - all of them. They only teach the basics and you'll need the good stuff - which we will provide, naturally."

"And Transfiguration?"

"Yep. McGonagall wrote the best series on the subject thirty years ago, but it's so advanced in places that they won't let anyone teach with it." Sirius grinned briefly. "Those are the books we used to teach ourselves to become Animagi. I had to pinch them from the Restricted Section. If you're interested, I'll get you a complete set for your birthday."

"Thanks. I'm tossing out everything connected to the History of Magic except _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts in the Twentieth Century._ That's not a problem, is it?"

"Remus probably has them all in the study if you ever get that desperate for something to read."

Harry heaved those into the growing pile of rejects with relief. "Maybe all these books could go to a second-hand shop."

"Make sure you cut your name out of them," Sirius advised him, grinning. "You don't want to start a bidding war in Diagon Alley when someone realises they've got an autographed copy of your school textbooks …."

Harry threw a wadded-up ball of parchment at him.

"Okay, what about my old clothes?"

"Chuck 'em," Sirius said promptly and he rolled his eyes as he picked an enormous, ragged sweater out of the pile. "Harry! _Why_ do you still have a stack of your cousin's old clothes?"

Harry looked embarrassed. "I dunno … I just have trouble chucking out clothes."

" _Throw. Them. Away._ Better still, we'll have a bonfire later. I've got some classic old rags of my own that need to be burned, before they land me back in the clink for crimes against fashion." Sirius began to toss item after item onto the pile of discarded papers. "Christ - half of this stuff can't possibly ever have fitted you, and the other half probably doesn't fit you anymore."

"I've got a few school robes that are still in pretty good nick," Harry said, holding up one example that was nearly new.

"Take the name-tags out and stick them in a pile with the books. There's a St. Mungo's charity outlet in Diagon Alley that'll be glad of them - no, Harry! Throw those jeans away."

"Muggles pay extra for tears, patches and fraying."

"You're not a Muggle," his godfather told him repressively. "The charity shop'll take your Quidditch robes … what the hell are you doing with a set of Slytherin robes?"

"What?" Harry looked at the green-and-silver Quidditch robes Sirius was holding up. "Oh - they're Malfoy's. We swapped robes after the last game of the season, remember? Funny, I thought I gave them back. He must still have mine." He grabbed them, rolled them up into a messy bundle and tossed them back into his open school trunk. "Better hang onto them, he's the sort to sue me or something if I give them to charity."

"Are you going to keep your Quidditch pads?"

Harry hesitated. "I'd like to."

"Fine. Put them in the trunk, we can always shrink them or something. Besides, you might need them - the Aurors field a team for the Inter-Agencies League."

Harry sat back, looking at the small pile that was left. "I'll keep my telescope, Sneakoscope and astrolabe, but what about my cauldron and scales?"

Sirius pursed his lips and turned the cauldron over. "It's not too battered. Is this your original one?"

"God, no! I must have blown up at least three in Potions. I think I bought this one before I started in sixth year."

"If you think you won't need it - and I can't see why you would, it's not like they're expensive after all - then scour it out and add it to the charity pile. I'd get rid of the scales as well, since they become inaccurate over time."

Harry nodded and added them to the pile. "Whew! I think that's it."

"Good. We'll have a bonfire later and ceremonially burn the crap. In fact - " Sirius looked anticipatory. "Let's have a barbecue tonight as well."

xXx

Since the invitations were a last-minute thing, Harry was surprised – and amused – to see how many of Sirius and Remus's circle of acquaintances were happy to turn up for what Sirius had described in his owled notes as "a Ceremonial Fashion-Mistakes Burning Party".

Even more amusing was the number of them who brought their own selection of clothes to be burned. Considering how broad the definition of 'fashion' was in the wizarding world, Harry had a hard time imagining what they would consider to be mistakes or even just plain bad taste. That question was answered when a frightening array of garments adorned with lace and appliquéd motifs were sheepishly produced.

"The 1970s were very hard on wizard fashions," Lupin commented sagely, as one particularly horrifying mauve robe, complete with spangled velvet stars patched around the hem, was consigned to the flames with a rousing cheer.

To Harry's amusement Ron had brought along his fourth year dress robes, which he slung onto the bonfire and toasted with a slug of butterbeer as they burned.

"Good riddance!" he remarked to Harry, who was preparing to toss one of Dudley's enormous shirts on the fire – although not without misgivings, as it was probably big enough to smother the flames.

Hermione's contribution was a hideous pinafore dress in wide brown and orange diagonal stripes.

"I've never seen you wear that!" Harry remarked, a little startled.

"And you never will," she replied grimly, over Ron's sniggers. "It was a Christmas present from my Great Aunt Agatha two years ago."

Sirius was dragging out his condemned wardrobe, complete with commentary.

"Look at these!" he roared happily, and he held a pair of purple velvet, flared trousers up to his waist. "Circa 1978!"

Harry had to do a double-take. "Sirius – is that _diamante trimming?_ "

Lupin looked pained. "I even remember you wearing them. Wasn't there a white shirt - ?"

There was. Sirius produced it, to a chorus of laughter and catcalls, for it had an enormous collar and frills down the front plackets and around the cuffs.

"My only consolation is that you could _never_ fit into those trousers now," Lupin said rather unwisely.

"Want to bet?" Sirius demanded and he disappeared into the house with them.

"Oh my God," Harry said, unsure whether to laugh or panic. Hermione was in fits of giggles and Ron was grinning widely.

Then Sirius re-emerged, to cheers, in both the trousers _and_ the shirt. Apparently both garments still fitted him like a glove. He certainly made a startling picture.

"You wouldn't believe the stir these caused when I first wore them," he told Harry.

Harry could only stare at him, dumbfounded.

"Burn them before my eyesight's damaged!" one of the witches laughed.

Sirius stripped them off again - someone obligingly whistled a striptease - and tossed them onto the bonfire, toasting them with his drink while standing there in nothing but a dashing pair of black silk boxers.

"Come on, Moony," he said to Lupin, grinning. "Your turn!"

"You're determined to humiliate me, aren't you?" But Lupin went into the house, emerging again a few minutes later with a large paper bag under one arm and Sirius's jeans and t-shirt under the other. "Get dressed," he told his friend firmly.

"I will, when you show us what you've got in that bag."

Lupin sighed. "I'm surprised you can't work that out on your own."

He pulled out a bundle of red and white chequered cloth that, when shaken out, resolved itself into a robe with big puffed sleeves and a wide, flower-like collar. There was an astonished silence - then Sirius went off into whoops of laughter.

"I forgot all about that!"

"You - you _wore_ that?" Harry asked unsteadily.

"No, Harry, I hung it on the wall and looked at it! _Yes_ , I wore it! Once."

"You must have looked like a Harlequin," Hermione said, amused, stretching out one of the sleeves.

"That was the general idea," Lupin admitted and he reluctantly rummaged in his bag again, pulling out a matching waistcoat, knee-length trousers and a black half-mask. "There was a hat as well, but James was drunk and threw it into a fountain."

Harry had a sudden, horrible thought. "What was _he_ dressed as?"

"Not Pierrot, so you can relax," Sirius said, amused. "Who was your Columbine, Moony?"

Lupin smiled reminiscently. "Hillie Smallbones … lovely girl."

"We had to drag the pair of them out of the bushes before McGonagall caught them," Sirius said in a stage whisper to Ron.

"Which was some small revenge for the number of times we had to throw your inamoratas out of the dormitory," Lupin retorted. He cast the waistcoat and trousers onto the fire. "Good riddance - they never did suit me. Didn't have the legs for them …."

Later, over slightly charred hotdogs and corn-on-the-cob, Harry, Ron and Hermione dissected their day.

"Sore," was Ron's description and he rubbed a shoulder ruefully.

"He got on Cho's bad side," Hermione remarked, smiling wickedly.

Harry looked from one to the other. Ron and Cho? That could _not_ have gone well. "Did she chuck you around?"

"For a while, until I started playing dirty," was Ron's bland reply.

"He started predicting her moves before she made them," Hermione explained. "She wasn't amused when she realised."

That sounded rather unlike Cho, whom Harry recalled having an excellent sense of humour.

"So what's on for tomorrow?" he asked.

"More getting thrown around, plus an afternoon of legal talk," Ron said, making a face.

"One of the senior Aurors is going to take us through the legal side of the job," Hermione explained. "Or the basics, anyway. Law will be a major part of our training, according to the manual."

"What about you?" Ron wanted to know. "How was the hearing?"

"Could have been worse," Harry said, shrugging. "She dragged up everything I did when I was a kid."

"Thirty Galleons is a heck of a fine."

"How did you know that?" he demanded.

"It was in the _Evening Prophet,_ " Hermione told him. "The reception clerk must have talked, because there was a bit about Sirius threatening the staff as well."

Ron snorted his amusement. "That was _brilliant_ …."

"Bloody hell," Harry sighed. "My life really is a kitchen sink drama."

xXx

"So, what do you fancy doing tomorrow?" Sirius asked him, when they were wearily collecting paper plates and empty bottles in the wake of their guests.

"Dunno," Harry admitted. He hadn't really given much thought to it.

"How do you feel about nipping across to Paris?"

He stared at his godfather. "Just like that?"

"Why not? There are regular portkeys from WhizTours in Diagon Alley and the Ministry issues single-day passports."

"But is it safe?"

"Last we heard, Voldemort wasn't in Paris," Sirius reassured him. "Actually, the last confirmed sighting was in Oslo yesterday - the Norwegian Ministry was playing it down though. Didn't you see the _Daily Prophet_ 's write-up?"

Harry frowned. "What would he want in Norway?"

"There are quite a few odd magical artefacts in Scandinavia," Lupin remarked. "Rumours about Thor's Hammer and the Mask of Loki have abounded for centuries. Mind you, the chances of his finding anything like that are about as likely as the Irish finding Balor's Eye, but it keeps certain elements of society usefully occupied."

"It would be just like Voldemort to find something like a bloody great two tonne, flame-throwing eye though," Sirius remarked sourly. "Can you imagine?"

"I'd rather not, thanks," Harry said.

"So what do you think of Paris?"

Harry had to admit it was tempting. Although - "I don't speak French."

"No, but Moony does and he's got the day off tomorrow."

Harry looked at Lupin, surprised and pleased. "Do you really want to go?"

Lupin smiled. "I haven't been to the Louvre in years."

Sirius snorted. "Who cares about a Muggle gallery full of dead pictures? But he's got to see the Rue des Illusions - "

"What's that?" Harry asked, interested.

"Paris's equivalent of Diagon Alley," Lupin explained. "Bigger, busier and a _lot_ fancier."

"Bring your biggest wallet," Sirius agreed, but he was looking at his godson hopefully.

Harry grinned. "Let's do it."


	6. Wednesday 29th July

The plan started off with one small but annoying hitch; Harry didn't possess a copy of his birth certificate and consequently couldn't apply for a passport. This led to the equally annoying and rather embarrassing situation of him having to be listed on Sirius's passport as a 'child', in spite of him being over seventeen.

"We'll have to sort that out," was Sirius's only comment.

But Harry felt a pang of doubt. He knew he possessed both a Muggle and a magical birth certificate; he also knew - because he had tried only a year ago - that he couldn't get a copy of the latter without first showing officials at the Ministry the former, to prove he really _was_ Harry Potter. And his Muggle certificate was still in his uncle's keeping. That meant a trip to see the Dursleys, which was something he had really hoped he would never have to do again. But that was a problem for another day.

They took their passports and went to Gringotts to change some money, emerging a short while later with purses full of Obélisques, Chariots and Aigles. Then they continued on to the little shop that housed WhizTours where, having bought tickets and had their papers checked, they joined a queue of people travelling to various destinations on the continent. Their portkey (timed to reach Paris for ten o'clock exactly and return at seven o'clock in the evening) was a copy of _Le Monde De Magicien_ \- "Lowbrow rag," Lupin commented disapprovingly. Nevertheless, he took hold of a corner of the newspaper along with Sirius and Harry, and within moments they were all swept away by the familiar, unpleasant sensation of a hook behind the navel.

The trip seemed to take longer than usual to Harry, but that might have been his imagination. Within moments they landed in a nearly identical little shop where a wizard with a very bushy moustache and ingratiating manner was waiting to check their papers again and bow them out of the door into the most extraordinary street Harry had seen since he first visited on Diagon Alley.

"Bienvenue à la Rue des Illusions," Lupin said to Harry, amused by the youth's wide eyes.

"Show off," Sirius said, grinning. "Come on, let's grab some coffee and a croissant while Harry absorbs the scenery."

"You just want to chat up the waitresses," Lupin retorted, but he steered Harry towards a nearby café which had tables spread out in the cobbled street. He was so busy looking at everything that he nearly missed his chair when he sat down.

"It's big," he said lamely, much to Sirius's amusement.

"Big" was an understatement. The Rue des Illusions was easily three times the size of Diagon Alley and the difference was most notable in its width, as it was twice as broad as its English counterpart. The only café in Diagon Alley that had room for tables in the street was Florean Fortescue's and even he achieved it by dint of having the shop frontage set well back from the main line of the Alley. Likewise, shops in the Alley could only have window boxes at first floor level or higher; here, there were planters spaced all down the centre of the street overflowing with extraordinary flowers and foliage.

Sirius was eventually forced to give Harry's shoulder a prod and redirect his attention to his coffee. When he looked around, both men were laughing at him.

"I'm not taking you anywhere if you're going to gawk like a tourist," Lupin told him.

"Sorry." Harry grinned, abashed. "This is pretty swish, isn't it?"

"Not the most eloquent assessment, but true."

Actually, it made Harry grateful that his first introduction to wizard society had been in London. He had always thought Diagon Alley to be the most amazing place, full of mysterious back streets and oddment shops; but comparing Diagon Alley to the Rue des Illusions was a little like comparing Portobello Road with Bond Street. Everything here was brighter, richer, more extraordinary and infinitely more overwhelming. The people too were intimidatingly chic.

It cast a little light on Fleur Delacour's attitude to Hogwarts when she first arrived there, Harry supposed. He told himself there was absolutely no reason to be self-conscious about his plain blue robe, especially as it was nearly new. Neither Sirius nor Lupin seemed to be bothered by such considerations; Lupin, in fact, looked remarkably at home in his surroundings, considering that he looked no more worldly or fashionable than Harry himself.

They finished their croissants and coffee and began a leisurely stroll up the street. Harry felt that it was all terribly distracting. It was impossible to see everything no matter how carefully they criss-crossed the street. Apart from the usual bookshops, apothecaries, cauldron shops, menageries, wand-makers, robe emporiums and a never-ending string of jewellers, there seemed to be shop after shop that sold … stuff. Everything from knick-knacks to artefacts to antiques to furniture to things that Harry couldn't begin to put a name to, let alone a purpose.

More interestingly, the French didn't seem to hide their Darker elements away in back alleys or even separate Dark items from Light. More than one shop they entered had (according to the two older men) some seriously dangerous objects casually on display with everything else.

"I can't decide if this approach is better than ours or not," Lupin commented at one point, as he disengaged the hem of his robe from the jaws of something they had all thought was a tapestry-covered footstool. The "footstool" put up quite a fight and Sirius had to stupefy it in the end.

"At least we know who to raid when it's all tucked away in Knockturn Alley," was Sirius's opinion as they left again.

"Maybe, but there seems to be less … _mystique_ about it here, for want of a better word," Lupin replied. "It's treated far more matter-of-factly, which I think is sensible because hiding it away just encourages certain elements to think themselves glamorous. Certainly the French are more prepared to look the Dark Arts in the face. There was never any of Fudge's head-in-the-sand attitude when I lived here, anyway. I don't know what it's like now, of course, but - "

"You lived here?" Harry asked, surprised.

"For nearly ten years," Lupin said, quite offhandedly. He saw Harry's expression. "Didn't you know that? I could have sworn I told you at some point."

"You told me, when I was lying low at your place the summer after Voldemort came back," Sirius said. "Harry, do you have some decent robes for Friday night?"

Harry would have liked to question Lupin further about his time in France, but something about the way Sirius changed the subject suggested that perhaps it would be better not to be too nosy, at least for now, so he made a mental note and let himself be diverted.

"My robes from Christmas still fit me – "

"They'll be too dark and heavy. Let's look at some others since we're here."

"I warned you the other day," Lupin said in an undertone as they followed Sirius into a robe shop. "It's that long-suppressed paternal instinct coming to the surface."

"I heard that!"

From the way he'd talked the night before Harry had got the impression that Sirius didn't speak French, so he was left feeling rather out on a limb when both men started chatting away quite fluently to the elegant witch who greeted them. It was worse when she took a step back and scanned Harry very critically from head to toe. For a moment her head tilted thoughtfully to one side ... then she nodded once and clapped her hands.

A very pretty girl who couldn't have been much older than Harry emerged from the rear of the shop, with a notepad in one hand and a tape measure in the other. A quick flick of her wand (accompanied by a flirtatious smile) and the tape measure began to take his measurements while the she took notes. A little unnerved by the sidelong looks she kept giving him, Harry could only be grateful that Ron was far away in London. He doubted his friend would have appreciated this scene much.

Meanwhile, Sirius was talking animatedly to the proprietress, much to Harry's surprise, for he had never known him to be quite so ... forward. Sirius was turning on the charm for all it was worth and from the looks of things the witch was quite happy to be charmed. Harry happened to catch Lupin's eye; the other man was observing this scene with the tiniest hint of amusement and when he saw Harry looking one eyelid flickered in a wink.

Clearly there was a great deal Harry didn't know about either of them.

xXx

From the robe emporium, they moved on to a confectioner's and then to the most enormous apothecary's shop Harry had ever seen. Professor Snape, he suspected, would happily have set up house there. He wandered, fascinated, among the strong-smelling racks of ingredients while Lupin made a number of purchases, talking softly to the owner in the necessary gloom, and it was only when the older man found him and they emerged into the brilliant daylight of the street again that he realised they had somehow managed to lose Sirius.

"Where'd he go?" he demanded, astonished at his godfather's sudden disappearing act.

Lupin coughed slightly, amused, and tucked his hand into the crook of Harry's elbow, gently urging him onwards.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll find us again in time to catch the portkey home."

"Huh?"

"How much French do you speak, Harry?"

"None," he replied, surprised. "I left my Muggle school before I could start lessons."

"Ah! Let's just say that Sirius is a _very_ fast worker – which you would have caught, if you'd been able to follow the conversation back in the robe shop."

"Oh. Crikey, he must be."

Lupin only smiled. "Want to get some lunch?"

This time they found a small, homely little restaurant that served thick, delicious soup with a mountain of fresh crusty bread. The clientele were mostly older-looking witches and students with their noses buried in books, but that suited Harry fine; the relentless glamour of the Rue des Illusions was becoming a just little oppressive.

"You missed an opportunity back there yourself," Lupin remarked, as he broke into a small _pain rustique_.

"Eh?"

"In the robe shop," the older man clarified. His eyes twinkled like Dumbledore's for a moment. "There was definite interest there."

"Oh – the assistant? Not my type." And even if she had been, his life wasn't worth the experiment if Ron found out, he reflected ruefully.

The amusement in Lupin's eyes deepened but he made no comment.

"I've never known Sirius do that before," Harry commented after a while. "I know he flirts sometimes, but ...."

"He probably has, he was just far more discreet when you were younger," Lupin replied mildly. "He was very conscious - has always been very conscious - of the need to be seen to be providing a good example for you, especially given that there was some opposition to him getting guardianship of you last year. I'll say this for him, he takes being your godfather very seriously."

That was an odd thought for Harry to wrestle with. "Who opposed it?"

Lupin hesitated. "I don't want you to misconstrue this …."

"I won't, I'm just curious. I mean, it's not as if it's really an issue anymore, is it?"

"Well … Molly and Arthur Weasley lodged an objection for a start."

Harry stared. "No one ever said!"

"I doubt most of the family knew." Lupin shrugged slightly. "There was nothing hostile about it - I think they were simply concerned that a man who had been on the run, and who had spent so long in Azkaban, might not be able to provide a stable home environment for you, so they lodged a counter-claim. It was their application that held up the process, but it didn't help that the Malfoy claim muddied the waters."

 _"Malfoy!"_

"Not Lucius and Narcissa - the brother, Marcellus, although I'm sure he was only acting on Lucius's orders. He's a Ministry man. He applied for guardianship of you on the grounds that it was a matter of community importance that you be raised in a proper wizard household. There was a whole lot of rubbish about ex-convicts and Muggles in it and I think he talked himself out of the Court, because they dismissed his application on the grounds that he should have lodged it years ago if he felt that way about your upbringing."

"Why did nobody tell me this at the time?" Harry demanded, outraged.

"Because you were already under a lot of pressure at school and from Voldemort and no one wanted you to worry about it," Lupin replied calmly. "Besides," he added blandly, "we thought you might overreact a little."

Harry glowered.

"Then, of course, Cornelius Fudge stuck his wand in with his usual grace and timing, making stupid remarks to the _Prophet_ like - "Can't have a convicted criminal in charge of a national hero, whatever next? Great jumping beans, the man killed thirteen Muggles with a single curse! Yes, yes, I know it was all a mistake, but there's no smoke without fire, you mark my words!"."

Harry had to laugh at this uncannily accurate impression of the Minister, but shook his head in disgust. "And how did I miss _that_ story in the newspapers?"

"We persuaded Hermione to hide them from you," Lupin admitted. His lips twitched. "Since you were busy making eyes at Cho Chang at the time, I understand it wasn't too difficult."

"Remus!"

The older man chuckled. "Anyway, it all blew over in the end, but it did rather put pressure on Sirius to prove he was a responsible man. Thanks to Fudge's little comments, he's still somewhat ... _persona non grata_ in certain circles at home. There are too many people who remember only the convict tag and not the fact that he was exonerated."

Like the Ministry receptionist the day before, Harry thought, remembering the man's alarm at Sirius's ire. "So he waits until he's away from home to cut loose."

"Something like that. But as I said, he'll surely catch up with us later." Lupin put his spoon down on the side of his plate. "Are you going to have a sweet? I think they have meringues."

"So how come you spent ten years in France?" Harry asked as the two of them tried to eat the feather-light puffs without them exploding into sugary dust.

Lupin shrugged lightly. "Things were difficult after your parents died and Sirius was sent to Azkaban. I think there was some feeling that if James's best friend could betray him, then who knew what the werewolf would do? And the werewolf regulations were even stronger then than they are now. So I decided to make a new start somewhere where I wasn't known."

"But ten years?"

His father's friend smiled. "Well, I _did_ settle down for a while. I had a job I liked and the people were pleasant … I had a column in a magazine," he said at Harry's enquiring look. "Didn't make a fortune but it was enough to live on. And I had a small house in Burgundy …." His voice trailed off and he looked wistful for a moment.

"So why did you come back?" prompted Harry curiously.

Lupin returned to himself abruptly, with a shake of his head. "Things went rather badly when my wife decided to divorce me," he said briskly.

"I … oh damn, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have - "

Lupin laughed softly at the youth's expression. "Harry, if I didn't want to tell you, I wouldn't tell you! It's really quite all right."

"Yes, but …." Harry sighed and some of his frustration bubbled over. "You see, _this_ is one of the bits that's in the instruction leaflet."

Lupin looked at him blankly. "I'm sorry?"

"You know, the leaflet you get when you take a new gadget out of its packaging? It's a fold-out piece of paper that tells you how to use the thing and it has a list of all the bits that should be in the box. But I didn't get one when I got my new life and the thing is, if I'd only had my instruction leaflet I'd have known about the bits marked _Godfather - includes detachable sex life_ and _Father's Friend, with ex-wife_."

"Or not," Lupin offered, trying to get into the spirit of this, "since ex-wives tend _not_ to come in the same package as their ex-husbands."

Harry gave him a dark look. "You're humouring me."

"That's because I think I shouldn't have let you have that glass of wine after all," was the wry response.

The imaginary list continued to scroll through Harry's mind as they paid their bill and left the restaurant, though.

 _Gay Best Friend - with optional bolt-on secret affair!_

 _Elderly, wise, but mad mentor._

 _Evil Dark Lord - with minions (handle with care)._

Fortunately, he just about managed to rein in his imagination as he reached the bit about inserting batteries and watching Voldemort's eyes light up. He decided it was good thing he could see the funny side of the situation at least.

They spent some more time roaming the street, mostly in search of an something to give Hermione as a birthday present. Harry rather liked the magic lamps for sale in one of the many knick-knack shops, but it seemed to take forever to find a nice specimen that was also guaranteed genie-free.

"Aside from anything else," Lupin remarked as Harry finally paid for his purchase, "I don't know who it would be more unfair to - Hermione or the genie. By the way, you might want to bear this in mind if you ever decide to buy a carpet. Make sure you see it unrolled first. Many a wizard has come unstuck through buying a rug sight unseen."

"Seems to me sometimes that Mad-Eye Moody has the right idea," Harry commented wryly. "Besides, I thought it was just Egyptian queens who got rolled up inside carpets. Sirius would love that. One quick tug and _voila!_ A scantily-clad woman on the floor …."

"Been there, done that. And no, I am _not_ telling you about it until you're older!"

Harry grinned. "It's okay, I don't think I want to know."

They emerged onto the street again and paused for several moments, undecided as to where to go next.

"You know," Harry said reluctantly, "this is great and all, but it does get a bit much."

"It _is_ a little overwhelming the first time you see it," Lupin agreed. He eyed the youth speculatively. "How would you feel about a poke around Muggle Paris for a few hours?"

"I'd love to – but what about Sirius?"

"Oh, I think if he couldn't be bothered to tell us where he was going or when he was coming back, we needn't worry about him too much. I'm pretty sure he'll turn up in time to catch the portkey home again."

So they set off for the gateway out into the main city.

xXx

It took some fairly quick moves and Lupin's knowledge of Paris to do it, but they managed to squeeze in visits to the Louvre and Notre-Dame Cathedral, plus a very quick look at the Eiffel Tower, before stopping at a modest restaurant for dinner. They arrived back in the Rue des Illusions at six-thirty and went straight to the little travel shop where they were supposed to catch their portkey at seven.

But there was no sign of Sirius when they arrived.

Harry didn't claim to know Lupin inside out, but he had spent enough time around the mild-mannered man to recognise when he was annoyed, even though he hid it extremely well. There was a certain tension in the way he checked his pocket-watch and tucked it away again, and a tightness about his mouth.

"I expect he just got held up," he said calmly, and he smiled at Harry. "Shall we have a coffee while we wait for him? And I'd like to visit that _boulangerie_ over there before we leave."

They stocked up on French breads and settled down for another coffee and pastry each. The street, which had been quieter when they first arrived back there, was coming alive again with a different sort of pedestrian traffic – quieter, more languid groups of people looking for entertainment. There were, Lupin told Harry, a number of small but popular wizard theatres and auditoriums in the Rue des Illusions, many of which were well worth a visit.

"There are only a couple in England now, more's the pity," he remarked. "There were more before Voldemort arrived on the scene, but they were popular targets for the Death Eaters the first time around, and even if they weren't wizard communities were too afraid to congregate."

"I've always wondered where bands like the Weird Sisters actually play," Harry said. "Muggle bands often hire sports stadiums or set up temporary stages in places like Hyde Park, but I've never heard of the Weird Sisters touring. Apart from that gig in Hogsmeade a couple of years ago, and that was pretty small-scale."

"They had a concert on Bodmin Moor the year I taught at Hogwarts," Lupin replied. "The problem is that they _are_ hugely popular and there simply aren't places where they can easily play to a large crowd in Britain. The organisation involved behind that gig nearly ate the profits, or so I'm told. It's the anti-Muggle security involved. They play more here on the continent and British fans have to make do with listening in on the wireless."

"But why don't they hire the Quidditch grounds from some of the big league teams?"

"Because our esteemed Head of Sports at the Ministry has made it nearly impossible for them to do so," Lupin said dryly. "The Ministry demands such a heavy cut of the profits that it's not worth it. Also, Bagman argues that sports facilities are at a premium and hiring out to a rock band for an evening denies the non-League teams who share the facilities precious practice time, etc. etc. That's complete griffin-dung, of course, but Fudge backs him on it."

"I don't like Ludo Bagman much, but it's hard to believe he could be such a spoilsport," Harry commented.

"Not enough betting opportunities in the Weird Sisters," was Lupin's cynical response. "Well ... let's go and see if our stray mutt has turned up, shall we?"

But there was still no sign of Sirius when they arrived at the little travel shop and as it was nearly five to seven, some of Lupin's tension began to show.

"I should have suggested you were put onto my passport," he said to Harry. "I might have known he'd do something like this!"

"What happens if we miss the portkey?" asked Harry, concerned.

"Depends on how late Sirius is. If he gets back within the next hour, we can probably buy another ticket. But this shop closes at eight and after that ... well, we might have to find a hotel for the night and make a quick trip to the French Ministry in the morning to sort things out."

"Couldn't we just take the portkey anyway and sort it out with our Ministry when we get home?"

"No," Lupin said sharply. "If you try to travel without a valid passport, you'll break the terms of your suspended sentence and Madam Bones will enforce that Apparition ban. And I really think that Sirius ought to have thought about that before he - "

"Wait! Isn't that him?" Harry pointed up the street.

Sure enough, Sirius was loping down the street towards them and grinning as though he'd pulled off a spectacular prank. In that moment, it wasn't hard to see the teenager he must have been.

"Did you think I was going to be late?" he called cheerfully as he came within earshot.

For a split second Harry really thought Lupin was about to hex him. He gave his old partner-in-crime a look that put some of Ron's mother's sizzling glares in the shade and turned to push the door of the travel shop open without a word.

"Oops," Sirius said quietly into Harry's ear as they followed him inside, and Harry didn't know whether to laugh or thump his godfather.

xXx

Harry was hailed with acclaim by Ron and Dean when he walked into the student house kitchen that evening.

"You're just in time! The Australia-Peru match starts in ten minutes on WWN!"

Excellent. That gave him a good reason not to go home immediately – and would hopefully give Sirius and Remus time to get their row over and done with.

"I brought some stuff back from France ...." He handed over the baguettes and ripe Camembert and, grinning, drew three bottles of wine out of the paper carrier he'd brought it all to the house in.

Ron took one look at the Eiffel Tower-shaped bottles and went off into fits of laughter. Hermione, who was making herself a snack, rolled her eyes in exasperation.

"Honestly, Harry! Have you any idea how vile that stuff is? They make it for _tourists._ "

He shrugged. "Well, I was a tourist. Besides, I thought they were funny. If it's any consolation, Remus thought the same thing as you, but it's not like I'd really know a good wine from a bad one, so who cares?"

"It's Hippogriff-pee in a tacky bottle," she told him rather sniffily.

"See if I bring you any cheap souvenirs again."

"Ignore her, mate," Dean said, grinning at him. "I don't have a problem with it - I was wondering where we'd get some booze before the game started."

"That's what I like to hear!" Ron cheered. "Let's squish a bit of that cheese into one of those baguettes – "

"Barbarians," Hermione muttered, and she swept out of the kitchen.

"I take it you won't be wanting any of these chocolates, then?" Harry called after her.

Armed with Camembert-stuffed chunks of baguette, the three bottles of wine and a large box of continental chocolates, the three of them hurried into the living room where Ron's wizard wireless was sitting in the middle of the coffee table. The pre-match commentary was still going on.

"Where's Seamus?" asked Harry.

"Out screwing," was Dean succinct reply.

"Oh. What about Neville?"

"Also out screwing," Ron said.

Harry frowned. "Did Nev have a sex life when we were at school and I just didn't notice? Because he seems to get really lucky these days."

"Yeah, but they're all herbologists," Dean pointed out, as though this explained everything. It didn't, but Harry accepted it anyway.

"France, eh?" Ron said, peering at the baguette in his hand.

"Just a day trip – though we nearly didn't make it back tonight, thanks to Sirius."

"Oh?"

"Yeah ...." Harry paused, wondering where Hermione had got to. He loved her, really, but she hadn't grown any the less opinionated over the years and he was touchy about people criticising Sirius and Remus – even his friends. He didn't want to give her a chance to comment on Sirius's behaviour today. After a moment's consideration he got up and shut the living room door, just in case. Dean and Ron were looking at him curiously when he sat down again. "Sirius took off at lunchtime – he picked up a woman in a shop and he almost didn't make it back in time to catch the portkey."

"Really?" Ron looked quite surprised.

"Yeah." Harry grinned at them both a bit sheepishly. "Actually, that's why I came over tonight. Since I was travelling on his passport it could have been a bit awkward. Remus was itching to tear a strip off him for it and I thought I should maybe leave them to it."

Ron let out a snort of laughter. "I'll bet!"

Dean was grinning too. "So what was she like?"

"Who?"

He rolled his eyes. "This bird of Sirius's, prat!"

"Oh." Harry blinked. "Um ... older? Dark hair?"

The other two looked at him.

"Is that it?" Ron demanded, amused.

Harry flushed defensively. "Well, I wasn't really paying attention to her – I was being fitted for a new robe at the time and – "

"Game's starting," Dean interrupted.

To Harry's relief, that was the end of the conversation.


	7. Thursday 30th July

Breakfast was made entertaining for Harry the next morning by the interplay between Sirius and Lupin, who had clearly had a row and were not quite prepared to let it go yet. As they were also maintaining a pretence in front of him that they _hadn't_ had a row, it was a little like watching two maiden aunts sniping at each other over their knitting.

Living with the Dursleys had made Harry sensitive to atmospheres; recognising the tone of this one, he slid into his seat at the table with a murmured greeting to both men and applied himself to the stack of toast Sirius tipped onto his plate.

"Tea?" Sirius asked him cheerfully.

"Please."

"What about you, Remus?" A slight edge entered Sirius's voice. "More tea?"

Lupin's eyes appeared briefly over the top of his _Daily Prophet_. "No, thank you, Sirius."

Harry swallowed the tiny bubble of laughter that surged up in his throat at Lupin's unusually prissy tone and fixed his eyes firmly on his plate.

"Good night out?" Sirius asked him, in a disastrously parental tone.

A sour sound drifted out from behind the newspaper, which Harry tried hard to ignore. Sirius glowered.

 _"Yes?"_ he demanded.

Lupin turned a page pointedly and shook the folds of the newspaper into submission.

"We caught the Australia-Peru match on the wireless," Harry put in hastily. He went off into a lengthy monologue about scores, moves and player deployment that managed to distract both men from their quarrel for all of ten minutes, until the mail arrived.

Hedwig brought Harry a handful of acceptance notes for his party the next day, plus a couple of advertisements and his copy of _The Snitch,_ a monthly Quidditch magazine. Meanwhile, Loki dumped a large pile of mail onto Sirius's (luckily empty) plate. Sirius picked up a clean knife and began to open it, humming gently under his breath as he did so in a manner Harry felt sure was calculated to irritate.

"It's all junk mail," he remarked in an aside to Harry. "How many patented broom attachments does one man need?"

Another odd sound emerged from behind Lupin's newspaper. Sirius's eyes flicked towards him in aggravation but he visibly got a grip on himself and ignored it.

Harry found that he had to chew on his lip to control himself.

Sirius resumed opening his mail, murmuring quietly as he flicked through the pile. "Gnome traps … Chizpurfle repellent … oh, this one's a bill, way-hay! … Performance Potions for Middle-Aged Wizards - what are they suggesting?" A particularly loud snort came from Lupin's direction, which Sirius pointedly ignored. He held up a gaudy piece of pink parchment. "This one's even personalised - "Mr. Black, You don't know how big your member can grow with our enlargement charms!" - _yes, Remus, do you have something to say?"_

"Nothing at all, I assure you," Lupin said dryly, folding his newspaper and laying it down beside his plate. "Why, would you like me to comment?"

"I wouldn't want you to be late for work," Sirius retorted through gritted teeth.

"Oh, I'm sure I can make it through the door with a few seconds to spare!"

Harry knew a battle-line when he saw it drawn in the sand; he grabbed his last piece of toast and escaped into the garden, where he could laugh in peace.

xXx

Harry was sitting on the shallow steps down to the lower part of the garden when Sirius emerged from the doorway fifteen minutes later, looking sheepish.

"Er …." he said uncertainly.

Harry suppressed a snigger. "Has Remus gone, then?"

"Hm."

"What's up?"

Sirius looked rather uncomfortable. "I'm to apologise to you for nearly screwing up your day yesterday."

"It's okay," Harry said, amused rather than offended by his godfather's rather defensive tone.

During their wander around Muggle Paris the previous afternoon, Lupin had observed to Harry that in many ways Sirius still hadn't totally 'grown up'. He hadn't said it in a condescending way; he had been absolutely matter-of-fact: _He was sent to Azkaban when he was barely twenty-three, Harry, and he spent thirteen years there without any kind of normal contact with other people. He wasn't a mature adult before he went in, so we could hardly expect him to be one when he came out. He does very well, but emotionally Sirius is nearer to you in age than he is to the rest of his contemporaries. So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone when he pulls the same silly stunts now as he did when he was twenty._

Harry suspected this was why he got along so well with Sirius. Not that he didn't get along well with Remus too, of course, but the dynamic was entirely different.

"Honestly, I didn't mean to turn up so late," Sirius persisted. "The time went a lot faster than I realised."

"It's okay," Harry said again.

After a moment, Sirius sat down next to him and they stared out over the dry grass of the rear lawn for a while. Harry got the impression that his godfather was craving a cigarette or similar nervous pacifier. He knew Sirius had smoked pre-Azkaban, as few of the photos of him in his albums showed him without a cigarette, but this was the first time Harry had seen evidence of the habit since he'd met him. Not wanting to make him uncomfortable, he searched for something neutral to say and came up with: "I bought a brilliant magic lamp for Hermione's birthday."

Sirius seized on the change of subject with relief. "Did you make sure it was genie-free?"

"Remus did."

"Good. Last thing any of you need is a genie loose in that house. They lurk in rolled-up carpets as well."

"Yeah, Remus said. What's so bad about genies though?"

"Aside from offering you three wishes and refusing to go away until you do?" Sirius snorted. "Well, there's a theory that most divorce lawyers are genies or have genie blood."

Harry thought about that. "Point taken."

"Added to that, by the time you release them from the lamp – or rug – they're usually pretty angry. Since they're vindictive little sods anyway, it's not a good combination."

"Hermione would probably want to release them on principle."

Sirius shook his head. "Hermione has bats in her bustle. There are some things in our world you don't mess with, Harry."

There was a long, thoughtful silence between them. Finally, Sirius sighed and looked sideways at the youth. "So ... do you have anything planned for today?"

Harry rubbed the side of his nose reflectively. "I did think about going to the beach. Because, you know, I've never actually been to the beach before. But then it occurred to me that it's the middle of the summer and most of the beaches will probably be jammed tight with holidaymakers, so I don't know."

"There's a beach in North Devon that's usually quite quiet, because it's difficult to get to," Sirius suggested. Sudden enthusiasm sparked in his eyes. "We could take the bike."

They looked at each other and Harry grinned.

xXx

Harry had expected sand dunes at the beach – just not sand dunes like these. They seemed to stretch on forever, like some scrubby patch of the Sahara accidentally uprooted and relocated to the south west of England.

"Braunton Burrows has the biggest stretch of sand dunes in Britain," Sirius told him over his shoulder.

Not wanting to leave his bike in the car park, which was a long way from the beach, he was flying it over the dunes, although in order to try and avoid any Muggles inadvertently seeing it, he was skimming just a few inches above the ground. They had driven to Braunton as it was daylight; not that Harry minded, as he was happy to ride on the back of the bike either way. Sirius wove neatly in and out of the dunes until they emerged onto a pristine stretch of sand that looked completely empty.

It was stiflingly hot. They parked up and Harry lost no time in stripping off the protective bike gear he was wearing, including his shoes, socks and t-shirt, leaving him standing in a pair of cut-off jeans.

"Is it safe to swim here?" he demanded of Sirius, who was busy casting a sand repelling charm on the bike.

"Yes, so long as you don't go out too far and watch out for the undertow."

That was all Harry needed to know. He was gone, racing down to the water and plunging in. He wasn't a brilliant swimmer, but after the Tri-Wizard Tournament he had persuaded Ron and the twins to help "drown-proof" him a little more in the Weasleys' garden pond.

A few minutes later he was grateful he had done so, when a huge black dog plunged into the water almost on top of him. For a moment or two he thrashed beneath the surface, then he managed to drag his head above water again, spluttering. Padfoot was paddling around him, gleefully barking and sneezing.

"Dammit Sirius!" He coughed out a mouthful of salt water. "You are such a mutt!"

And suddenly Sirius was Sirius again, laughing and trying to duck his godson a second time.

"Watch who you're calling a mutt!"

That set the tone for the next couple of hours. There was a lot to be said for a guardian who supposedly hadn't grown up, Harry felt. Also, he couldn't help noticing that Sirius seemed to like spending time in his canine form. He supposed it must be very freeing for his godfather to shake off his human body and societal restrictions, even for a short while, and just race around, digging, chasing after bits of driftwood and worrying great mouthfuls of seaweed. It was hard to stand in judgement on a dog, after all, and all too easy to mentally separate Padfoot from Sirius.

Having never made sand-castles as a child, Harry was childishly keen to have a go and Sirius was nothing loathe to join in. They had a small difference of opinion over whether using magic to assist in the construction process was cheating or not, but Harry was soon convinced when he realised just what could be achieved with a couple of very simple stabilisation spells. So what if it wasn't traditional –

"It's traditional in wizard sand-castle contests," Sirius pointed out.

They took a break for lunch after that, feeling more tired from their activities than either wanted to admit. They had brought a picnic lunch, packed into a basket strapped onto the bike's carrier, and were shortly sprawled out on a rug, munching French bread and Camembert.

"I reckon I'm going to get pretty fed up of Camembert," Harry remarked after a while, surveying his portion wryly.

"How can anyone get tired of French cheese?" Sirius demanded, grinning. "Barbarian."

"Yeah, that's what Hermione said last night." Harry shrugged. "I don't see what's so barbaric about preferring Cheddar. The smoked ham's okay, though. Which is just as well, because Remus bought a couple of tonnes of it."

"He tends to stock up whenever we go across to France."

"I suppose he got a taste for it, living there for so long." Harry hesitated, then added, "He told me about his wife. And getting divorced."

"I wondered if he would." Sirius also paused, looking at his lunch for a moment as though it held all the answers. "Did he tell you about his son as well?"

Harry stared. "No."

"Maybe I shouldn't have told you that, then."

"I won't say anything - "

"No, I know you won't." Sirius sighed. "He told me the year after I got out of Azkaban, when I was staying with him. The boy's called Philippe. He's … Christ, he must be eleven now."

"Old enough to start at Beauxbatons."

"He might already have started there - they have a junior school as well." Sirius stared out over the dunes. "He told me the divorce was pretty acrimonious, but not why. She knew he was a werewolf when she married him; it's illegal in France, the same as here, but they went ahead anyway. But when they divorced, she decided to go the whole way and used his lycanthropy as the reason."

"But if she knew all along - !" Harry protested.

"She told the court she didn't," Sirius said, his lip curling in disgust, "and Remus didn't argue because he was afraid that if he did the judge might decide his wife was an unfit mother and take Philippe away from both of them. But it meant that _he_ was barred from seeing the kid, and if Remus hadn't voluntarily left France they probably would have deported him." He paused, then added, "He didn't say exactly, but I got the impression that when the local people found out he was a werewolf things got a bit nasty."

Harry winced. "Hagrid told me once that people are more superstitious on the continent."

"Oh, we're just as bad!" Sirius replied sourly. "We just express our prejudices a little differently."

Which was food for thought for Harry.

xXx

Swimming straight after lunch was obviously out of the question, but that was okay with Harry, who had brought his new Auror Manual along with him and intended to read at least a couple of sections if he could. It was heavier going than he had expected; the book was deceptively small, having an Expanding Charm on it to accommodate at least a hundred more pages than it should have been able to contain, and the reading was very dry.

While Harry did that, Sirius dug out a pile of paperwork he had brought along.

"You seem to have a never-ending heap of that," Harry remarked presently.

"Get used to it," Sirius murmured as he scratched away with his quill. "All law enforcement work involves a mountain of paperwork. You can't sneeze in our job without having to file forms for it in triplicate."

Harry smiled at that, but inwardly he was a little daunted. Being an Auror - as Sirius and Lupin had endlessly impressed upon him over the past couple of years - was anything but glamour and excitement. In fact, although he counted himself lucky to have been accepted onto the training programme, Harry knew that had the threat of Voldemort not existed he would probably have looked elsewhere for employment. His all-time ambition had been to play Quidditch professionally and two teams had offered to sign him on before he left school. But because of Voldemort he had been forced to refuse; he was simply too big a target and playing professionally would have put not only himself but his team-mates at risk every time he took to the air. And there had always been, overshadowing everything in his life, an air of expectation … the wizarding community might not actually articulate it, but Harry knew they had great and somewhat desperate hopes of him. People held him up, like Dumbledore, as a shield against their fears.

Voldemort, Voldemort … everything came back to Voldemort.

As an adolescent Harry had hated him with a blind passion that only the young and naïve are capable of. As an adult - or near-adult - it was different; experience led him to view the Dark wizard with something closer to wary resignation. He supposed that if he thought about it, a part of him did still hate Voldemort, but he had learned the hard way that giving in to hatred only brought trouble. He had also learned to accept that he was afraid of the Dark wizard; he might not be able to openly admit that fear to others, but admitting it to himself at least made it easier to deal with.

An introspective mood like this couldn't last on such a fine day. Harry looked down at the page he had been reading and was betrayed into a snort of laughter. The opening chapters dealt with appropriate clothing and equipment, and the line drawing of a wizard who was demonstrating the various gear, as Harry read down the text, was currently struggling with a pair of floppy thermal longjohns next to the section entitled _Accoutrements For The Cold._ Either the illustrator had a great sense of humour, or the Manual had taken on a life of its own.

An hour later he was less amused. _God,_ this was boring. How the author had managed to make the rules and niceties of Wizard Duelling so uninteresting he couldn't imagine and still less could he work out why the subject was even included in the Auror Manual, since an Auror's duty was to detain Dark wizards, not give them a stylised means of taking a pop at him.

"That's the third sigh in twenty minutes."

Harry looked up just in time to see Sirius toss the last of his scrolls to one side and tuck his quill away.

"Whoever wrote this wanted to put people off becoming Aurors," he replied.

"That bad?"

"Haven't you read it?"

"Read it?" Sirius laughed. "Harry, there _was_ no Auror's Manual when I originally signed up. That's a new invention."

"Great." Harry gave up and tossed it to one side. "The author can't have been much of an Auror if all he could think about was thermal underwear and the correct way to bow to an opponent in a duel."

"You'll meet him next week," Sirius replied, amused. "Rufius Kisbie – he teaches law these days. When I joined the Facility he was well known for being highly methodical and rigid about following the rules, and he hasn't changed much. On the other hand, he _is_ very good on the details – he has near-perfect recall. Interrogation is a speciality of his."

"Everyone has to have a hobby," Harry said fairly. "Especially someone who thinks woolly longjohns are a good idea."

Sirius chuckled. "Oh, believe me – Kisbie is the kind of man who collects his toenail clippings for a hobby, if you know what I mean."

"Eurgh."

"Have you read the bit about bodily hygiene yet?"

"I skipped it," Harry replied, grimacing. "Aunt Petunia already taught me what happens to nasty little boys who don't wash their armpits. Doesn't this book just give the other senior Aurors a good laugh?"

"Since it has the qualified approval of Mad-Eye Moody, we laugh where he can't hear us."

"Qualified approval?"

"I've never heard his full opinion on it," Sirius said, "but according to Remus it falls somewhere between disapproval over the book's wordiness and a conviction that it doesn't go far enough on the paranoia front. If Moody had his way, you know, it would be against regulations for Aurors to marry or form any other kind of committed relationship. He thinks having families is a liability. Take a good look when you get a chance – you'll notice that a good percentage of those Aurors complaining about being stuck on desk-duties doing background checks are the ones who are married with children."

Harry was incredulous. "Can he do that? I mean, surely it's discrimination."

Sirius shrugged. "Did you know that Remus isn't allowed to interrogate anyone on his own? Actually, that's nothing to do with Moody or anyone else at the Facility – wizard courts won't accept the evidence of a werewolf, so someone has to be with him to act as witness if the matter goes to trial."

"But – "

"We're not a very enlightened race, Harry."

 _Tell me something I hadn't already worked out for myself,_ Harry thought, suddenly feeling rather embittered. It was appalling to him that Lupin should be treated that way simply because he suffered from a condition that was no fault of his own. That said, though, Harry knew that the lot of werewolves had already improved a great deal over the last couple of years – mostly through ceaseless campaigning by people like Sirius and Arthur Weasley – to the point where Lupin could not only find decent, paid employment but actually be an _Auror_ of all things. Change came extremely slowly in the wizarding world.

He wondered what that would mean for him and Ron.

"Do wizards have trades unions?" he asked suddenly.

Sirius snorted. "We do – sort of. That's a fairly recent concept, though, and they're pretty ineffectual, since they aren't backed by legislation. The Ministry is very suspicious of them, mostly because the people who are anti-trades unions – the purebloods mostly – have made old Fudge aware of how much trouble unions have caused in the Muggle world."

"Let's change the subject," Harry suggested moodily. "You're putting me off being a wizard, let alone being an Auror."

"Don't be stupid! We _need_ young people like you who want to change things. That's the problem with our world – we all live so much longer than Muggles, and stay healthy into extreme old age, that the same people get stuck in office for decades and nothing changes. But since Voldemort's last attempt at taking power, the young people have been changing their attitudes and expectations." Sirius rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I'll say that for a war – it shakes everything up. There are a lot more half-bloods and Muggleborns in your generation too, and no matter what anyone tells you, Harry, that's a good thing for the wizarding world. Fresh blood and fresh ideas. We're painfully in need of both."

"I doubt the likes of Fudge and the Malfoys would agree with you."

"That just proves my point, doesn't it?"

Harry laughed and his mood lifted.

xXx

They arrived home again just after six, to find Lupin just stepping out of the fireplace. Sirius had bought three fresh lobsters for dinner – as a peace offering, Harry suspected, for he knew Lupin liked shellfish. At any rate, the storm-clouds of that morning had apparently cleared, for dinner was a jovial meal. Sirius in particular had great fun teasing Harry about the self-defence classes he would be starting the following week; Harry had made the mistake while they out of telling him about Ron's description of his encounter with Cho Chang. Sirius had offered a practical demonstration, after which Harry had been forced to swallow every joking remark he had ever made about his godfather's advancing years.

Lupin only smiled at him though. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "All the new trainees are dreadful at it. They're all taught to rely on magic too much. Cho just has a natural advantage – her aunt used to be one of our defence instructors."

"Are you any good at it?" Harry asked, suddenly suspicious. After all, Lupin hadn't been an Auror for very long.

The other man coughed slightly, hiding a smile, and Sirius rolled his eyes.

"His technique's lousy, but he makes up for it in strength," he explained. "Werewolves are naturally very strong and fast."

"It's all right for _some_ , isn't it?" Harry grumbled good-naturedly.

After dinner he had a quick shower to get rid of any residual sand. He was tempted just to climb into bed, despite the early hour – all the fresh sea air and extra activity had exhausted him. But Ron had specifically asked that he visit that evening, so Harry reluctantly pulled on some fresh clothes, found a clean robe and his wand, and made the short trip through the Floo to the student house.

xXx

"Mustn't be too late back," Harry murmured, although his contented tone held no real concern whatsoever. "Got an Apparition test tomorrow, you know."

"You can stay a bit longer, though." Ron was equally unconcerned. He paused in his careful exploration of the skin of Harry's belly. "You taste salty."

"Mm ... went swimming in the sea." Harry frowned slightly and looked down at his friend. "I did shower before I came here."

Ron grinned at him. "It gets into all those little nooks and crannies, if you're not careful."

"Cheek!"

This resulted in a sudden tussle that distracted them for quite some time. Later, Harry was dozing lightly against Ron's shoulder when Ron gave him a gentle nudge.

"Hey Harry ... Harry?"

"Hm?"

"Happy birthday, mate."

Harry blinked at him. "What do you mean?" he murmured.

Ron nodded to the little alarm clock on the bedside table. The hands were pointing to a couple of minutes past midnight. "Happy birthday."

"Oh – oh!" Harry finally woke up properly. "I'm eighteen. About bloody time."

Ron chuckled. He burrowed down in the covers a little and wrapped himself around the other youth, resting his chin on his shoulder.

"Do you want your present now?" he asked after a while. "I thought I might give it to you now, instead of at the party. Don't really want an audience for it."

Harry tried to turn his head enough to look at him, but was only partially successful. "Why, is it something embarrassing?"

"Nah, but it might cause a lot of questions. It's not exactly traditional – well, it is and it isn't, if you know what I mean."

"Not really," Harry told him dryly.

"I'll get it," Ron decided, and he released Harry and climbed out of bed.

Harry leaned back among the covers and watched appreciatively as his friend prowled around naked. Ron was still teenager-slender, but he was starting to develop very nice muscle definition and thanks to being a restlessly active person he was already very toned – as his taut rear and legs showed. His back was also very smooth and he had splendidly broad shoulders.

Then he turned and caught Harry looking. He grinned.

"Tell you what – I'll just pose for you, shall I?"

"Yeah, just give me time to call Colin Creevey and ask him to get his camera over here," Harry retorted, feeling his cheeks redden.

Ron laughed. "Christ, Harry, he'd wet himself for the opportunity to expose us as gay!"

Harry felt oddly gratified by Ron's casual use of the word "us". "Let's save the photo-shoot for another time, then. I'll just have to, ah, memorise you some other way."

Ron's brows went up. "Snape used to go on about how the sense of smell is a memory trigger."

"With a nose like his, he'd have to say something like that, wouldn't he?"

The redhead snorted. He was fiddling with a palm-sized flat box and suddenly he looked a lot less self-assured than usual. Harry sat up, intrigued. He was unsure what to make of Ron's expression. "You know, you don't have to give it to me now – "

But Ron was shaking his head. "No, I do."

Clearly bracing himself, he returned to the bed and climbed back under the covers next to Harry. Harry, trying not to look too obviously, noted that the box was inscribed on the top in gold leaf with the name of a Diagon Alley jeweller's shop, which came as something of a surprise.

"Um ... you might think this is a bit pushy," Ron said nervously, "or too soon or something. It's just ... I wanted .... It doesn't have to mean anything," he said finally, looking a little defensive. "It's just that it's traditional and ... blokes like us sometimes do this too."

His anxiety was infectious and although Harry couldn't really make head or tail of what his friend had just said, something told him it would be better if he just encouraged Ron to go ahead and show him the present, rather than asking for an explanation. Possibly things would be clearer that way. Or possibly not.

"It's okay," he said meaninglessly, wondering if it really was. What the hell was in that box?

Ron resolutely took the lid off.

Considering that he had been expecting something cataclysmic, it was a tremendous relief to Harry to see that there was nothing more dangerous than two plain gold bracelets inside. Then realisation caught up with him and he tensed up before he could stop himself.

Oh. _Oh._

That explained quite a lot.

In wizard society, Harry had discovered the year before when Ron's brother Charlie got engaged, rings were for marriage only. Instead, it was traditional for the couple to exchange bracelets. This custom apparently dated back to a time when marriage, even among the poorer members of society, was something arranged more for the benefit of the two families involved than the couple themselves. The bracelets represented a kind of financial down-payment on dowries and settlements, Lupin had explained to Harry, and also provided a measure of compensation should the engagement later be broken. At the highest levels of society the bracelets were enormously expensive and inlaid with precious stones.

Ron was watching him very nervously indeed, but try as he might Harry couldn't think of anything to say. This symbolised a far greater level of commitment between them than he had imagined – something permanent, in fact. And while he knew Ron had been thinking that way all along, it was one thing for Harry to hear him saying it across the kitchen table in daylight and quite another to have solid (and probably, for Ron, quite expensive) evidence of it in such an intimate situation.

It wasn't an engagement, of course. It wasn't legal for same-sex couples to marry in wizard society and, as Harry had already noted, wizard society was not particularly enlightened on the subject – considerably less so, in fact, than their Muggle counterparts.

But that wasn't really the point; the point was that, to Ron, this was _as good as_ an engagement or marriage. Ron, who to be fair had always been up front about his expectations of this relationship, had just laid his cards on the table and demanded a similar gesture from Harry.

And Harry hadn't a clue how to respond.

"Like I said, it doesn't have to mean anything," Ron muttered, when the silence grew too obvious to ignore.

"You can't say that, Ron," Harry said, with a sigh. "Obviously it means something, or you wouldn't have done it." He hesitated, then added, "And before you say it – yes, I do know how important this is to you."

"Are you saying it's not important to you, then?"

Harry wondered how hard it had been for his friend to say that in such a level tone. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I just ...." His voice trailed off.

"What?" Ron demanded quietly.

Harry looked at him helplessly. "Ron ... we're _eighteen._ Yes, it feels fabulous now – but can you honestly say that you think things will be the same when we're thirty?"

"I don't know, do I?" Ron smiled unconvincingly. "I don't suppose things'll be the same, but we could still be together. Couldn't we?"

Harry looked at that smile and wanted to shout _You're a seer! Look into the future and tell me!_ But he knew that was pointless. Ron suffered from the same blind spot as every other seer ever born; he couldn't see his own future. And if he was totally honest with himself, it wasn't Ron's future Harry was thinking of anyway. Try as he might, when he looked ahead and tried to plan his own life he couldn't do it. He was stuck in a never-ending holding pattern, unable to plan more than one or two steps ahead because of Voldemort.

The truth was that there was a question mark over his very existence. Today he was eighteen years old. He had no idea if he would still be alive in a year's time.

And Ron wanted him to make a lifetime commitment.

His thoughts must have been written across his face because Ron's mouth tightened and his eyes began to burn. "You are _not_ going to die, Harry."

Harry managed a grin as unconvincing as Ron's earlier smile. "Everyone dies, stupid."

 _"Don't,"_ Ron said angrily. "I'm not joking – I've done casting after casting on you, and he's never beaten you yet in any of them – not in the stones, the cards or even in your horoscope."

Harry stared at him. "When did you cast my horoscope?"

The redhead flushed, but lifted his chin slightly. "Back at the beginning of last summer. I had to ask Sirius for your time of birth."

"You never showed me!"

"Yeah, well I didn't do it for you. I did it for me."

Harry had taken divination too; he knew what that probably meant. "You did a partnership chart, didn't you." Ron didn't answer. The look on his face was enough. "So. Do I ever get to see it, seeing as half of it is mine anyway?"

"Maybe ... one day."

Great – now his future was being held to ransom. Harry chided himself at once for this uncharitable thought. Ron wouldn't be petty that way. And in any case, it was probably better that he didn't know everything straight away, good or bad. It wasn't as if life could be mapped out in all its details, after all, just as fate couldn't be avoided. You had to live, not exist.

"This was a really bad idea," Ron said suddenly and he sat up, putting the lid back on the box. "Stupid ... I shouldn't have – "

Harry grabbed his wrist quickly, before he could climb out of bed again and hide the box away in embarrassment.

"Don't – wait."

He had no idea what was waiting around the corner for him. He could die at any time. But then, so could Ron and everyone else; there were no guarantees for any of them. He couldn't put off doing things – being happy, being in love – just because he _might_ die tomorrow or the next day or the next month or year. And he had no right to put Ron's life on hold for that reason either.

Harry tugged on Ron's arm until the other youth reluctantly slid back into bed beside him. He took the box out of his hands and opened it, taking out one of the simple gold bands.

"Left wrist, right?"

"Yeah ...."

He slipped it over his hand; it seemed quite loose at first, but once it was in place it shrank slightly to fit more comfortably. It wasn't snug but nor would it move about and get in the way.

He had to pick up the second bracelet and offer it to Ron. The redhead seemed unable to believe that Harry had accepted the gift and the gesture. He fumbled a little as he slipped it over his fingers, and Harry realised that his friend was a little overwrought in that moment. He wasn't quite sure what to say though.

"You're not going to cry, are you?" he teased finally. "Only, I do stupid stuff when people cry."

Ron gave a sniffly kind of laugh. "Such as?"

"Well, I've been known to shag them."

"Oh, well in that case maybe I'll grizzle a bit more ...."

Harry snorted. He tugged Ron down until they were both under the covers together and leaned his forehead against the other youth's. He chewed his lip for a moment ... saying certain things didn't come any more easily to him than touching people.

"You ... you know I love you, don't you?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Harry hesitated, then added, "I know I don't say it, but that doesn't mean – "

"It's okay," Ron interrupted.

"It is?" asked Harry, doubtfully.

"Yeah. 'Cause you do say it – in your own way."

"I do?"

"You just have to know Harry-speak." Ron gave him a lopsided grin. "And after seven years of field study, I'm an expert."


	8. Friday 31st July

The day started on an ominous note.

Harry wasn't even up and dressed when the alarm on the Floo chimed, alerting Sirius and Lupin to the fact that someone without privileged access to their house was stuck in the trap on the fireplace. It turned out to be an opportunistic journalist who was promptly sent packing, but by the time Harry came downstairs for breakfast Sirius had despatched two more without ceremony and had his head in the fireplace, telling Lupin - who by that time was at work - that he was going to block all incoming traffic to the Floo.

"Happy birthday," he said wryly to his godson, when his head re-emerged from the green flames of the Floo. "You're going to be a popular man today - everyone wants a quote from you. And me. And Remus. And Loki and Hedwig too, probably."

The Floo chimed again, making Sirius swear. But this time it was a firecall from Arthur Weasley, looking harassed and exasperated with his thin red hair sticking up at angles.

"Thought I'd better warn you that we just had a reporter land in our fireplace, Sirius," he began.

"Old news, Arthur. We've had _three._ "

"Oh, how ridiculous!" Mr. Weasley spotted Harry and gave him a rueful smile. "Morning, Harry! Happy birthday."

"Thanks, Mr. Weasley. Sorry about all the fuss - "

"Nonsense! Only to be expected, I suppose, but I thought we'd never get rid of him. Molly's standing ready with a frying pan in case any others decide to visit without an invitation."

"I'm taking our fireplace off the Floo network until Harry and I are ready to leave for the Apparition Office, Arthur," Sirius said. "Better that than spend the morning having arguments with people."

"I was going to say the same thing to you," Mr. Weasley replied, relieved. "I thought we should let you know, just in case. We'll see you both later, then."

He nodded to them and his head vanished. But before Sirius or Harry could move, the Floo chimed yet again.

"This is going to get very tiresome," Harry remarked, but this time it was Hermione's head in the flames. She too looked harassed and rather cross.

"I'm never going to get to work this morning at this rate!" were the first words out of her mouth. "Honestly, Harry, the Floo is _alive_. We've been un-trapping reporters and throwing them out since seven o'clock! They won't listen when I tell them you don't live here yet. I think we're going to have to take the fireplace off the network."

"Do that," Sirius advised her. "We're going to as well and so are the Weasleys. There's no other way to deal with it, Hermione."

She nodded. "I'll have to Apparate to work. Ron went on ahead to warn them I'd be late, but I'm amazed he didn't have a collision with someone trying to get in. Even Neville decided to Apparate this morning and they probably had to un-splinch him when he got to Kew." Harry snorted and she rolled her eyes at him. "Well, you know what he's like! Oh - happy birthday, by the way."

"Thanks," Harry said, grinning. When she was gone, he turned to Sirius, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "Do you think they're harassing my aunt and uncle as well?"

For a moment the two of them stared at each other, unholy glee on both faces. Then Sirius sighed regretfully.

"I'm supposed to be a responsible adult - I'd better speak to Remus and send someone to Surrey, just in case."

xXx

Breakfast was peaceful once the Floo was blocked. Wards on the house and grounds prevented Apparition and portkeys (any fool trying it would find themselves in the New Forest, according to Sirius) so Harry was able to eat his toast and open the pile of birthday cards next to his plate in peace. Most of the cards were from old schoolmates.

Sirius then presented him with the _Daily Prophet_ which, much to Harry's disgust, had an old and grumpy-looking photo of him on the front page. It had been taken on the steps of the Ministry during Sirius's re-trial when he was sixteen, and he'd been looking so unhappy because Lupin's evidence had just been dramatically dismissed due to him being a werewolf. It had caused a tremendous sensation, but for all the wrong reasons.

"You're going to have to learn to pose and smile for the cameras," Sirius told him, amused.

"Only when I'm dead!" Harry retorted. He scanned the article, a piece of fulsome rubbish about him growing up and starting work: _"Not such a boy anymore!"_ the reporter said coyly. There were a few comments about his party that evening - Florian Fortescue had confirmed the venue but not the details - and, ridiculously, a quote from Madam Malkin who stated in disappointed accents that she hadn't been asked to dress him for the event. "For crying out loud!" Harry grumbled and he pushed the newspaper away.

But that reminded him of his new robes from Paris, so after breakfast he spent some agonised moments trying them on again. He wasn't much of a clothes horse, as he had never had the opportunity before, so he didn't feel he could really venture an opinion. But the rich wine-red colour both Sirius and Lupin had persuaded him to try made him nervous; he would have preferred something less dramatic, especially as the lining was an even more startling silver which must have been produced by some magical process. And it was made of _silk_ \- a thick, heavy weave on the outside, with satin for the lining.

Smoothing the sleeves nervously, he went into Sirius's bedroom to take a look in the full-length mirror standing at an angle to the window. It cooed at him affectionately as he turned from one side to the other, wondering if the robes were too much.

A tiny sound alerted him to his godfather's presence; Sirius was standing in the doorway with a very odd look on his face.

"I don't look like one of Fudge's creepy sidekicks, do I?" Harry asked him nervously.

"Of course not." Sirius shook off the strange expression and walked over to adjust the collar for him slightly. "Actually, I was thinking that you looked like your dad. He had a robe in a similar colour to this, although it had those stupid sleeves that were popular during the seventies. Wasn't lined like this either … this was a good choice, it suits you."

"Bit fancy," Harry said doubtfully.

"It's your birthday party," Sirius pointed out dryly. "The idea is not to fade into the wallpaper. You might want to wear something black underneath - don't you have a black silk shirt? And trousers?"

" _Now_ who's Madam Malkin's lovechild?" Harry joked. "Besides, you must know my wardrobe better than I do, seeing as you bought most of it for me!"

But he went back to his own room and dug out the shirt and trousers. Then he carefully hung up the new robes and left the room before he could change his mind.

xXx

Harry had booked an eleven o'clock appointment at the Apparition Office for his test. At the time it had seemed like a good idea to make a fixed time (instead of just turning up ad hoc, which was possible but could lead to a long wait), but at half past ten Lupin Apparated into the living room looking tense.

"There's a slight problem," he said. "There's a small mob of reporters at the Ministry, waiting for you to arrive."

"Damn!" Sirius said. "I don't suppose we can go in by a different entrance, can we?"

"They're at _all_ of the entrances," Lupin replied, exasperated. "And they're not making trouble, just waiting quietly, so we can't really move them on. But it's attracting attention, so I wouldn't hang around too long or the crowd will be too big to get past."

Sirius looked at Harry, who drew a deep breath. "We'd better go now, then, hadn't we?"

It was bedlam when they arrived in Diagon Alley. It wasn't possible to Floo directly into the Ministry building, so they dropped out of the huge fireplace at the Olde Bakehouse Café a short distance away and were promptly mobbed by a sizeable gang of elderly witches who had been watching the crowd in the street while they gossiped over tea and cakes. Getting past them without causing offence took time; they all wanted to bless Harry, shake his hands and pat his face with grandmotherly affection.

Emerging into the Alley was like the end of Sirius's trial all over again, only this time it was Harry alone who was getting the attention. Reporters and interested members of the public packed out the narrow street to bursting point and the moment he stepped out onto the cobbles, a dozen camera flashes went off like fireworks and the previously quiet crowd erupted into shouts.

 _"Harry, how does it feel to be eighteen?"_

 _"Do you expect to pass your Apparition test first time?"_

 _"How does it feel to be an adult?"_

 _"What are your plans for your future, Harry?"_

 _"Are you looking forward to starting your Auror training on Monday?"_

 _"Are you inviting anyone special to your party tonight?"_

 _"Harry, do you have any messages for You-Know-Who, if he's out there?"_

Harry, who had been determinedly battling his way across the street without answering anyone, stopped dead at this last question and turned to look at the woman who had asked it. She was a batty-looking soul with a dandelion in her hat, and her eyes seemed to be looking in opposite directions, but when she realised she had caught his attention she was quick to press her advantage.

"Alice Walleye of _The Quibbler_ , Mr. Potter," she squeaked excitedly. "Do you have any messages for You-Know-Who on your birthday?"

"Yeah," Harry said, before he could stop himself. "I hope he drops dead of a nice, painful heart-attack."

In the startled silence that followed this, Lupin and Sirius grabbed Harry quickly and thrust him through the door of the Ministry before he could say anything else.

xXx

The test was in two parts. The first, the written examination, covered such things as legal safe distances, modes of Apparition, determination of co-ordinates and other technical details. Harry sweated through it, wishing he had spent more time revising for this part of the test, and fretted as he handed over the paper, feeling sure that his calculations were off.

The second part was the practical examination. While a granite-faced witch marked his paper, a younger wizard handed Harry a list of ten destinations and instructed him to meet him at each one. Then the examiner vanished. The first three were simple - an empty wooden plinth just outside the office door, the top of the marble steps of Gringotts, the Astronomy section at Flourish and Blotts - although they took considerable precision. The other seven were locations across the British Isles of varying distances and complexity, starting with the front gates of Hogwarts and covering such spots as the statue of CuChulainn at Dublin Central Post Office, Glastonbury Tor, the port of St. Helier in Jersey and a very chilly, windswept islet off the Hebrides.

When Harry finally popped back into the examination room, the witch was waiting to hand him his paper. He had, she informed him sternly, just scraped through, but he could do with a little more study in the calculation of co-ordinates if he ever wanted to use that method with any degree of real safety.

All in all, it had taken just under an hour.

He emerged into the lobby, clutching his Apparition licence, to find that Sirius and Lupin had been joined by Ron and Hermione.

"So, did you pass?" Ron demanded.

Harry held up his Apparition certificate, grinning, and his friend gave him a celebratory punch on the arm.

"Of _course_ he passed!" Hermione scolded, but she bestowed a kiss on Harry's cheek. "Well done, Harry. We thought we could have lunch with you, since you're here."

"Good idea," Harry agreed. "I'm starving. The Leaky Cauldron?"

So Harry was treated to a celebratory lunch which became quite convivial, or as convivial as it could be considering that three of the participants had to go back to work afterwards and couldn't drink - and that most of the other tables in the pub were occupied by reporters hopeful of overhearing something they could print. Since the first thing Sirius did after they were served was to cast a minor shielding spell around their table, the reporters were destined to be disappointed.

"Nothing personal, Harry, but we can't stay long," Hermione said, as they were served. "We've got some shopping to do." And she gave Ron a significant look.

Misinterpreting this, Harry just managed to stop himself mentioning that Ron had already given him his present and adjusted the gold band under the table self-consciously. It had a Misdirection Charm on it to ensure it escaped notice.

"Oh yeah," Ron said unhappily.

Hermione rolled her yes. "It's just a set of new robes, Ron! What did you think you were going to wear tonight - that old set George and Fred gave you for the fifth year Yule Ball? They're barely fit for dusters."

"We'll come with you," Sirius suggested blandly, but there was a wicked spark in his eyes. "Harry and I have our robes, but I still need to shoehorn Moony into a new set."

Lupin jumped, giving him an appalled look. "I don't need new robes, I have a perfectly good set - "

"- that have been hanging in your closet since the beginning of time. If you use one more adjustment charm on them they'll fall apart!" Sirius fixed his friend with a glare. "We are buying you a new set of robes for you to wear to my godson's party and that's the end of the matter."

"Padfoot!" Lupin said explosively. "I'm not your wife, dammit!"

Ron made an odd little sound that Harry felt sure was a muffled snigger.

"Good," Sirius retorted. "I like to think I'm still _compos mentis_ enough not to marry someone so bloody stubborn and annoying!"

"It's only a set of robes," Hermione said in a tone that was probably meant to be conciliatory.

Ron and Lupin sent her twin glares which made her retreat behind her glass of water in some disorder.

"You are _not_ buying my robes for me," Lupin told Sirius firmly. "I'm perfectly capable of buying my own, thank you very much."

Sirius made a rude noise. "If I let you do that, you'll buy some vile mud-coloured thing from the sale shelf with sleeves that are too long. You can damned well wear a proper colour for once and in something your own size."

"We're not all out to impress the waitresses," Lupin retorted with an edge in his voice, " _or_ to make a spectacle of ourselves."

Sirius blew a raspberry, making Harry choke on a mouthful of his jacket potato.

"I hope that wasn't an attempt to make me feel guilty, Moony, because if it was - it _failed._ "

"Do you want us to leave you two alone?" asked Ron, his mouth twitching.

Lupin gave him a dark look and applied himself to his lunch with tattered dignity. Sirius, looking very pleased with himself, also began to eat.

The watching reporters looked rather disappointed that they hadn't been able to overhear the altercation.

xXx

"Go away," Ron hissed to Harry out of the corner of his mouth.

"Eh?" Harry gave him an astonished look. "Why?"

His friend looked desperately at Hermione, who rolled her eyes. "I think what he's trying to say is that he'd prefer you to go and help Sirius sort out Remus, while he has a girly moment trying to decide which robe he looks his best in," she explained.

"Why do you need me to go away for that?" asked Harry, mystified.

Ron made an exasperated sound and Hermione stifled a giggle, hastily turning Harry around and giving him a push.

"Just go, Harry!"

Bemused and a little miffed, Harry made his way to the other side of Madam Malkin's shop, where Remus was standing none too patiently to be measured while Sirius flicked through a book of cloth samples.

"What about this?" he was saying.

"If you try to make me wear orange _anywhere_ , Padfoot, let alone to Harry's party, our next stop will be St. Mungo's."

"I think you'll find that colour is called _Autumn Sunrise_ , Mr. Lupin," the assistant with the tape measure put in helpfully.

"Doesn't look anything like an autumn sunrise," Lupin said ungraciously.

"What about green then?" Sirius continued.

Harry peered over his shoulder. "I had a set of robes that colour when I was fourteen," he remarked. "Mrs. Weasley bought them for me."

"I like brown," Lupin said wistfully.

"I know. Most of your other robes are brown." Sirius leafed through the book a little further. He pointed to another sample. "What do you think, Harry?"

"I'm wearing red," Harry objected.

"True." Sirius sighed and turned the page.

"Thank God for that," Lupin muttered. "Me - in red!"

"He's being deliberately obstructive," Harry's godfather said irritably. "He gives everyone the impression that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, when really he's a stubborn little swine who - "

"Sirius, you really should learn to stop talking about yourself like that."

"Has Ron found anything yet?" Sirius said, deliberately turning his back to Remus.

Harry shrugged. "Dunno. They sent me away so he could be girlie or something."

"I hope that doesn't mean he's going to turn up in anything lacy or frilly," Sirius joked.

"I don't think so," Harry said firmly, remembering Ron's desperate use of a severing charm on the cuffs of his fourth year formal robe.

"Ahem!" Lupin said pointedly, and when they turned back to him the assistant was holding a length of chocolate brown cloth to his shoulder.

 _"No!"_ Sirius said forcefully.

xXx

"It never occurred to me that we'd all end up traumatised by our clothes at this party," Harry muttered, as he tugged fretfully at the sleeves of his shirt.

"Stop pulling them about," Sirius said sharply. "Here, you can borrow these."

"Cufflinks," Harry said unhappily. "Now I feel about fifty years old."

"Cufflinks are a statement," Sirius corrected him. "Oh, come here! Some Seeker _you_ are, with fumble-fingers like those."

"I need an extra hand to do them up!" Harry complained.

"Your dad never had that problem." Sirius nimbly slipped the silver cufflink through the right buttonhole. "He had a whole collection – we used to borrow each other's."

Harry squinted at his wrist. "Is it a dragon?" Tiny ruby eyes blinked back at him and he chuckled. "Looks like Norbert."

"Norbert?"

"Hagrid's baby dragon. Not such a baby now, I suppose."

"When did Hagrid have a dragon?" That was Lupin, wandering into Sirius's room and tugging a little at the collar of his new robes. They had ended with a compromise; a fine silk/linen blend in bottle green with a paler green satin lining and a narrow banding of gold around the collar, cuffs and bottom hem. He and Sirius were still arguing over who paid for them, though.

"When I first started at Hogwarts," Harry replied. "Long story." He thought the new robes suited Lupin, the rich colours drawing attention away from his prematurely greying hair.

"There." Sirius finished putting the cufflink in for Harry. "Give me the other one."

"Oh! No, it's okay – I can manage the left one," Harry said, quickly pulling his wrist away. He didn't want Sirius to find the bracelet, which he certainly would if he was handling his cuff.

"Suit yourself. And get your robes on; we're running late." Sirius turned to pick up his own new robes - midnight blue silk lined with a matching blue spangled with gold stars.

Harry hurried back into his room and pulled on his robes. The effect against the black trousers and shirt was certainly dramatic, but he couldn't help feeling in sympathy with Lupin. He really wasn't a dramatic person and would have preferred something that made him feel less conspicuous. Then he wondered what Ron would think and felt an odd little shiver run down his spine. Forcibly dragging his mind away from that, he checked his pockets for his wand and wallet – and his new Apparition licence – and gave his hair a final, exasperated pat. It was no good; it would probably still be sticking up when he was in his coffin.

"We're going to be fashionably late," Lupin said from the doorway.

Sirius stalked into the room.

"Hat," he said firmly, plucking the soft cloth item off the clothes hanger and holding it out to Harry. He and Lupin were already wearing theirs, but Harry grimaced.

"Do I have to?"

"Yes! You're eighteen, not eight."

"But it makes me look like a demented artist!" The current fashion was for round, squashy hats with a small circular brim, like something out of Shakespeare.

"And your point is?"

He pulled it on, muttering under his breath. Sirius glared.

"Honestly, you two will be the death of me!" he said, turning to go down the stairs.

"We'll make sure you have a smashing funeral," Lupin promised him, amused.

"Where are we Apparating to?" Harry wanted to know.

"The street outside Fortescue's – he's closed his Floo and warded against Apparition, to prevent gatecrashers."

It hadn't even occurred to Harry that people might want to gatecrash his party, although he supposed the reporters might try to get in. Then he realised just as he was preparing to Apparate that they would probably be waiting for him in the street instead.

xXx

They were met by a wall of flashbulbs when they arrived in Diagon Alley, followed by a storm of shouts from the assembled reporters. Harry thought there might actually be more of them than there had been that morning, if such a thing was possible. It was bedlam and he could only stick close behind Sirius and trust that he could see where he was going, because all Harry could see was a maelstrom of faces and cameras.

Part of him wanted to laugh at the excessive attention. He thought he knew now what it was like to be a Hollywood superstar - except, of course, that the wizarding world didn't seem to see any need to provide him with police protection or bodyguards.

The bell on Florean Fortescue's door rang and Harry promptly fell over the step. He was seized by a dozen hands and pulled inside the shop, where the door closed quickly again behind him and Lupin. In the brief silence that followed his arrival Harry gave in to the urge to snort his amusement.

"Bet you didn't know I was leading a double life as Tom Cruise!"

There was a burst of laughter, even from those among his guests who probably had no idea what he was talking about. Then Florean Fortescue himself appeared and seized Harry's hand, shaking it vigorously.

"Happy birthday, Mr. Potter, a very happy birthday to you indeed!"

"Thanks, Mr. Fortescue …."

And that opened the floodgates for everyone else to descend upon him with hugs, kisses, back-slaps and handshakes.

xXx

It was a sort of buffet meal with no fixed place settings and everyone simply moved around at will from table to table, chatting to each other. Under the circumstances, Harry found it easier to plant himself at the most accessible spot and stay put, letting people find him when they were ready, which worked rather well.

Perhaps an hour into the party, Ron appeared at Harry's side - wearing a rather striking costume of black robes and jeans with a silk shirt the exact copper colour of his hair - and planted himself in the chair next to him with the air of someone taking permanent root. He grabbed the nearest bottle of wine and topped up both their glasses.

"I owled that horoscope to you before I left," he said. "You know, the one we were talking about last night?"

"Oh, thanks." Harry sternly commanded himself not to blush. "Do I have to interpret it myself, or have you included an explanation?"

A wicked look entered Ron's eye. "I thought I'd make you sweat for it."

There was a definite double entendre there but Harry sincerely hoped he was the only one who heard it.

"That's nice," he said dryly. "I'll … get my Divination books out later."

"You can't," Sirius said from further down the table. "They were in the pile we sent to the charity shop, remember?"

"Looks like you'll have to be nice to me, then," Ron remarked.

Before Harry could think of a suitable reply to that, Fred and George had come up to him and were clapping him on the shoulder. It was always, Harry felt, a bad sign when these two were being overly friendly.

"Harry, my man!" George said, sliding into the spare seat next to him. "Great party."

"Thanks," Harry replied warily. "Sirius arranged it."

"Good, good ... but we were wondering ...."

"Yes?"

"Where are we going next?" Fred finished for his brother.

Harry looked at them blankly. "Next?"

"It's not rowdy enough for them," Ron clarified from his other side. "They want to know if you're hitting the clubs later."

That hadn't even occurred to Harry and he looked down the table to Sirius for guidance. His godfather merely leaned back in his chair, a glass of wine dangling from his fingertips, and shrugged, smiling.

"Could do, I suppose," Harry said, turning back to the twins. "Why, did you have somewhere in mind?"

The identical evil grins told him he'd been right to be wary. George slung an arm around his shoulders and they both leaned closer, confidentially.

"See, mate, it's like this," Fred said, lowering his voice. "Seeing as you're eighteen now – "

" – and thankfully free of all those niggling little age restrictions – "

" – we thought we could introduce you to a select little establishment we're acquainted with in Knockturn Alley."

This sounded suspiciously like an attempt to part Harry from his money. "I'm not into gambling," he said at once.

The twins rolled their eyes and Sirius chuckled into his glass. Ron, however, was bristling slightly.

"It's a knocking shop, Harry," he said, glaring at his brothers. "They tried to take me there last Easter."

"Really?" Harry looked at him with interest. "You never told me!"

"Nothing to tell. I didn't go!"

 _Big surprise_ , Harry thought, a little amused by his friend's reaction. All the same .... "No really, Fred, George – it's very kind of you, but I'm not interested."

 _Two pairs of red eyebrows lifted incredulously and George looked at Sirius in disbelief._

 _"Is it me, or is he the most virginal non-virgin alive?"_

 _Sirius began to laugh. "You're asking _me_ that?"_

"Yeah, you caught him with Cho Chang, right? So what did you do to him to put him off sex?"

"Who said I was off sex?" demanded Harry, ignoring Sirius's spluttering.

Fred dragged up a spare chair, straddled it and regarded Harry earnestly. "Harry, mate – we're just trying to do you a favour and save you from unnecessary celibacy."

"Yeah, not giving in to your natural urges can be mentally and physically damaging," George chimed in.

Sirius was laughing helplessly now, but Harry could sense Ron's annoyance like a small, rumbling furnace at his side and kept his eyes directed firmly towards the twins. He took a sip of his wine and smiled at them sweetly.

"I wouldn't know much about that," he said, "seeing as how I probably got laid more times in the last month than the pair of you have in the past year. And I didn't have to pay for it, either."

"As a responsible guardian, I'll just pretend I didn't hear that, shall I?" Sirius commented, very amused.

"And it's nothing to brag about, Harry Potter!" another, sharper voice said and Hermione gave him a nasty dig in the middle of his back as she passed.

Fred grimaced, watching her go, and turned back to Ron with a sharp look. "Promise me, little bro, that you are not going to marry her. I love her, but one of our mother in the family is enough."

Ron snorted into his wine, good humour restored. "I think I can safely promise that!"

 _I am not going to blush, I am NOT going to blush ..._. "So what's the deal here?" Harry asked quickly. "Why are you so keen to drag me to this place anyway?"

Instant innocent, disclaiming smiles.

"Merely concern for your welfare and happiness, Harry!"

"We just want to see you have a birthday to remember!"

"They own shares in the place," Ron put in dryly.

"You own shares in a _brothel?_ " Harry exclaimed before he could stop himself.

That got one or two startled and interested looks from the people nearest to him.

" _Joke,_ Harry!" Fred said loudly, clapping him on the back and grinning at the other guests. "Good one, eh, George?"

"Yeah, never thought he'd be taken in by _that!_ " George agreed heartily.

"A _brothel?_ " Harry spluttered again, but in a lower voice. He turned to Ron rather wildly, looking for confirmation, and discovered that his best friend, his godfather and his godfather's best friend were all in stitches at his reaction.

"It's _not_ a brothel!" Fred said in an offended tone. "I'll have you know that it's a very select escort agency - "

"Bollocks!" Ron interrupted. "It's a knocking shop. What else would it be in Knockturn Alley? And some of the girls there aren't even girls."

Suddenly everyone was looking at him.

"How do you know that?" Harry asked, interested.

"Bill told me." He glowered at them all. "Excuse _me!_ I don't need to pay for it either."

"Yeah, I've heard they hand out free blow-up dolls to every hundredth customer at Saddles and Paddles," George retorted.

Taken by surprise, Remus Lupin snorted up a mouthful of his dry white wine and choked. Sirius slapped him on the back helpfully.

"So how does Bill know about this place?" Harry persisted. Then he blinked. "Saddles and Paddles?"

"It's a sex shop," Sirius told him, grinning. "They've got premises above Archimedes Instruments."

Harry stared at him, revolted. " _Never_ tell me how you know that!"

Lupin managed a wheezy laugh at this. "Better ask how Ron knows!" he croaked.

Ron shrugged, trying to hide a grin. "They've got a brilliant reference section."

Harry's mouth opened and shut uselessly.

"I might have known the only thing that could make you read a book was some form of perversion, Ron Weasley!" Hermione said rather waspishly from the next table.

The twins sniggered.

"Yeah, it had wipe clean covers too," Ron retorted, aggravated. He shot a sly look at Harry. "I'll have to take you in there sometime, mate."

"No, really, that's okay," Harry said, appalled to feel himself blushing again. "I don't think I'm a sex shop kind of bloke."

"Yeah, we're starting to think that too," George remarked rather snippily.

"Not every man is a pervert!" snapped Hermione.

"Since when has having a normal sex life been perverted?" demanded Ron, swinging around to glare at her. "And what kind of a hypocrite are you, when you're shagging Viktor Krum at every opportunity?"

Hermione turned a very unflattering shade of scarlet and sent a sizzling glare at the twins, who were sniggering like little boys. She opened her mouth to retort, but Mrs. Weasley loomed up between them, hands on hips and glaring impartially.

"Just _whose_ sex life are we talking about here?" she demanded.

The twins disappeared so fast Harry was surprised they didn't leave scorch marks on the floor.

"Mine," he said quickly, hoping to draw her fire away from Ron.

She softened immediately, but much to his dismay she hugged him and patted his cheek instead.

"Nonsense! Plenty of time for that sort of thing when you're older, dear."

"Molly!" Sirius protested, rolling his eyes. "He's eighteen!"

"Exactly!" Mrs. Weasley said fondly, oblivious to the incredulous looks she was getting. "No need to worry about things like that at his age. There's a nice girl out there for you, Harry - all you need is a little patience and I'm sure she'll present herself in good time!"

She winked at him and swept away to another table, leaving Harry to stare at the others speechlessly.

"And she raised six boys ...." Lupin said, shaking his head.

xXx

"What was that about Viktor Krum?" Harry asked Ron softly a little while later, when everyone else was circulating again.

Ron snorted witheringly. "He's Hermione's mystery man, the one she's been sneaking into the house all week. I caught him coming down the stairs early this morning, with a "guess who got some?" look on his face."

Having seen just such a look on Ron's face numerous times over the past three weeks, Harry didn't need to ask for clarification on that point.

"Why's she making such a big deal of hiding it?" he asked instead. "I mean, he's an all right bloke and it's not as though she hasn't been owling him forever. No one's going to say anything if she's seeing him."

Ron shrugged. "Beats me, mate. Something to do with her parents maybe."

Having met the Grangers (who were the most amazingly stable and accepting Muggle couple ever) Harry found that unlikely, but he couldn't be bothered to pursue the subject any further. He knew Hermione well enough to know that some sort of explanation would be forthcoming eventually.

"So ...." Ron drawled mischievously. "Sure you don't want to make a trip to Saddles and Paddles with me?"

Harry felt himself turning slightly pink. "Maybe!" His lips quirked. "You never explained how Bill knows this knocking shop of Fred and George's."

"Oh, that's – " Ron suddenly stopped and hissed, rubbing his left temple.

"Ron?"

"I ... nothing. It's okay." The redhead grimaced. "Might be all the candles in here setting me off."

Harry peered at him, concerned. "Are you still picking up images all over the place?"

"Now and again." He saw Harry's face. "I'm okay, honest! You know what it's like." He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Come on, let's get another drink. This bottle's empty."

But they no sooner stood up than a cheer went up and a beaming Florean Fortescue appeared, wheeling a cart with Harry's birthday cake on it.

"That's a bit different," Ron noted.

It was roughly two and a half feet tall and formed ingeniously into the shape of a lighthouse, complete with revolving light at the top. Harry's name and the number 18 were iced onto the angelica turf at the base, and the candles were scattered across sugar rocks.

"Why a lighthouse, Harry?" Ron's father wanted to know.

Harry shrugged, a little embarrassed. "There was a teacher at my Muggle primary school – when she retired, the canteen staff made her a cake in the shape of a lighthouse. I don't know why it was that shape, but I always wanted one like it." He glanced a little shyly at his godfather. "Thanks, Sirius."

Sirius looked modestly pleased with himself. "They did do a good job, didn't they?"

"It seems almost a pity to cut it," Ginny remarked, bending closer to get a better look at the revolving lamp.

But a cake knife was produced and the lights were dimmed so that Harry could blow out his candles. He just about managed it with one breath and everyone cheered and began to sing "Happy Birthday". It wasn't until they were finished and Harry was about to make the first cut (with everyone advising him on the best place to start) that he realised Ron was no longer at his side. He looked around and saw the redhead standing back, gripping his head in both hands.

"Ron?"

There was an odd pause in which Harry just had time to register his friend's wide, horrified eyes, before his scar blazed into acid-hot pain. The cake knife slipped from his fingers and he heard himself cry out as he clutched at his own head.

"Harry!"

"Ron!"

"What's happening – "

"Death Eaters!" Ron rasped. "Here – now – "

The windows at the front of the shop shattered.

xXx

In later years, Harry's recollection of his eighteenth birthday party tended to be a little blurred. For one thing, it had merely been the start of a three year campaign by Voldemort and his followers to try to kill him on his birthday, so the details were apt to run into one another. One thing he did recall, with great indignation, was that his lovely lighthouse birthday cake was one of the first victims of the assault upon Florean Fortescue's. Hit by a blasting curse that just missed Sirius, it exploded in a hail of icing, whipped cream and delicate chocolate sponge, in a manner the Weasley twins seemed entirely too impressed by.

Flat on the floor where he had been thrown by Lupin, Harry could only curse helplessly. Being pinned down by a determined werewolf meant that he _stayed_ pinned down, while the others tried to organise themselves.

"Dammit, Remus, I'm supposed to be an Auror – "

"Not until Monday, you're not," was the unsympathetic reply. "Stay _exactly_ where you are, please."

"Like I have a choice," Harry muttered.

There was an odd sort of pause after that first blast, in which Harry could hear the sounds of a score of people breathing noisily and various odd sounds made by settling debris. It seemed horribly quiet after such a loud assault.

"They're holding back," Ron said unexpectedly in a lowered voice. "They're waiting for something."

Sirius, who was pressed against the wall near the door, nodded curtly. "Everyone move back towards the side walls, please, as quietly as possible. Try to keep something like the tables and chairs as cover."

He began to erect temporary blocking spells over the broken windows, while Remus tugged Harry's shoulder and they slid uncomfortably across the glass-strewn floor to the nearest wall. They fetched up next to Florian Fortescue, who was running his eyes over his restaurant – probably counting the cost of the attack. Then his eyes went to Remus.

"Should I lift the anti-Apparition ward so that we – "

"No!" Lupin said quickly. "Absolutely not! That's probably the only reason why they don't Apparate straight in here."

"How strong a ward is it, Florian?" Arthur Weasley asked from the other side of the room.

The restaurateur grimaced. "Only enough to keep out the easily discouraged, I'm afraid. There didn't seem to be a need for anything more – journalists are prevented from going further by their code of conduct."

Harry thought of Rita Skeeter and wondered if a trifling thing like a minor ward or code of conduct would have stopped her.

"We'd need to be outside to make it any stronger, wouldn't we?" Hermione's voice said nervously.

"Correct," Lupin said, and his voice took on the slightly dry but encouraging note Harry remembered from his DADA lessons. "And why is that?"

"Because you can't see any holes in the ward from the inside – "

"I don't think this is a moment for teaching, Moony," Sirius remarked tensely.

"By all means panic instead, if you think it'll help – "

"What do you think they want?" That was Neville.

"Me, you prat," Harry retorted irritably. "Isn't it always?"

"Bragging again," George said lightly.

"Yeah, you always have to be the centre of attention, Harry mate," his twin chimed in. "I've been meaning to mention it to you. I mean, Old Scaly _might_ just want someone else for a change, ever thought of that?"

"Yeah, we've been sending him bribes to take Percy away for years," George added. "Of course, he _would_ choose tonight to collect him – "

"Thank you _very_ much," Percy said in a disgruntled tone from somewhere under an upended table.

"That'll do," their mother said sharply.

Harry marvelled at how calm they all seemed. His own heart was hammering, but he took a slow breath and licked dry lips.

"Sorry," he muttered. He wasn't sure if the twins could hear him, but Lupin squeezed his shoulder gently and Ginny, who was tucked behind a chair a foot or so away, gave him a thumbs-up and a shaky smile.

"If it's a weak ward, Florian, could we lift a section and evacuate people out of the rear exit?" Sirius asked.

"They're behind the shop as well," Ron said in a distracted voice.

"Damn. What about – no, the Floo's disconnected, isn't it? We won't be able to get that reconnected tonight either."

"Um ...." That was Hermione again. "Actually ... when we were having the Floo connected at the house, I was talking to one of the engineers and, well - "

"There's a way to forcibly connect a Floo point," Fred put in. "Hermione, I'm impressed. We heard rumours but could never find out if it was true."

"Do you mean to say you actually got a _Floo Engineer_ to tell you how to do it?" George demanded of her.

"Well no, but I already knew the theory and getting them to explain how it was done properly filled in some of the gaps. But I don't – "

"What do you need to do it?" Sirius interrupted.

Harry couldn't see her from where he was crouched but he could hear the alarm in her voice. "I've never tried it! All sorts of things could go wrong - "

"Sometimes you have to take a risk," Lupin put in, before Sirius could reply. "Let's try anyway. What do you need?"

"Someone with more experimental charms experience than me," she admitted in a resigned tone.

"That sounds like us," Fred said brightly.

"And you, Moony," Sirius added. "Your charms theory was always better than mine." _And you can keep an eye on them,_ was the unspoken subtext.

"Very well. Take my place, will you? Florian, perhaps you could show us your usual Floo point ...."

After several minutes of awkward manoeuvring, Lupin, the twins, Hermione and Florian Fortescue all made their painful way to the back of the shop. Meanwhile, Harry found himself in the company of his godfather instead. He felt he wanted to express his dissatisfaction at not being allowed to do anything useful, but couldn't think of a way to say it that wouldn't sound petty and childish. So instead he said, "They blew up my cake."

Sirius gave him the same slightly deranged grin he had given him the morning before he took the Floo apart. "I vote we make them pay for it, the inconsiderate bastards."

Harry felt a little better. "Do you think we're going to get reinforcements or something?" he asked.

"We'd better, or Moody will need another magical eye when I've finished with him."

There was a pause. Then Arthur Weasley coughed and said in a humorous voice that was only slightly forced: "Well – no one can say your birthday party didn't go with a bang, Harry."

There was a scattering of nervous laughter around the room.

"How's your scar?" Sirius suddenly asked in an undertone.

"After that first pain? Tingling." Harry grimaced and touched it gingerly. "It's still sore and ... it's getting worse, little by little. He's coming, isn't he?"

No need for anyone to ask who "he" was.

"Probably. Ron?"

"They're still waiting," the redhead replied.

"How many of them are there?"

Ron grimaced. "I can't tell."

Sirius frowned. "Why not?"

Until now Ron had been huddled behind his table with his eyes closed, but suddenly the blue eyes shot open, bright with pain and annoyance. "Because I _can't,_ " he snapped. His voice was rough with frustration. "I don't have a crystal ball or any other kind of speculum with me and right now, without a focus, I don't get a clear image. Okay?"

 _"Ronald ...."_ Mrs. Weasley scolded.

"Red wine," Harry said suddenly. Sirius looked at him. "Is there any red wine left? And a glass?"

"I think there's an unbroken bottle over here – " someone said.

"Great. Pour a glassful and let Ron have it. Ron, mate, use your robes as a background to black out the glass."

Sirius squeezed Harry's shoulder. "Good thinking."

There was some shuffling around again and eventually a glass of wine was passed to Ron, who wrapped the bowl in a fold of his robes and tilted it this way and that until he found an angle that suited him. There was a long pause.

"Can you all not stare at me," Ron asked finally, sounding a little desperate. "In fact, please try to keep your attention away from me – think about something else, okay? I can't concentrate when you're all looking at me and wondering how painful your deaths will be. It's too much information."

Morbidly amused, Harry wondered how many of them understood what Ron was saying. According to the books, the image of a particular person's death was one of the easiest for a good Seer to divine, which perhaps explained why Professor Trelawney had always been so fixated upon death omens.

"Everyone spend a moment thinking about the Erumpent's left knee," Sirius suggested gravely.

There was a puzzled silence, which was broken by Neville asking, "Which left knee?"

Harry felt an hysterical titter rising up in his throat. Then Ron very quietly said, "Shit."

"How many?" Sirius asked tensely.

"There's six directly at the front for a start."

"Six isn't too bad ...." someone commented rather foolishly.

"Plus four at the back," Ron added, "and at least another ten at various points down Diagon Alley."

That meant at least twenty witches and wizards who wouldn't be hampered by any legal considerations about using Unforgivable Curses, Harry realised, not to mention the scores of other spells and hexes that weren't strictly illegal but considered unethical by the majority of wizard society.

"Aurors? MLEs?" Sirius asked into the frightened silence that followed this.

"Mobilised, but having some trouble getting through." Ron's voice was becoming a little ragged, not with fear as some of his listeners might think, but with pain. Using his Sight extracted a heavy toll. "There might be more Death Eaters than I can see, I don't know. And someone's trying to block me."

Harry hadn't even realised such a thing was possible, but there was so much about being a Seer that he didn't know. Ron had had extra tuition in his gift after it manifested (Professor Trelawney, not being a True Seer herself, had only been able to teach him theory – and she became difficult when she found out about the extra lessons) but it wasn't something he talked about much. For one thing, much of what he did couldn't easily be explained to a non-Seer.

"Don't strain yourself," Sirius advised him quickly. "Voldemort has Seers too – maybe not of your calibre, but much more experienced. Don't strain yourself against them and don't make yourself a target. Harry?"

"He's getting closer," Harry said, knowing what Sirius was asking. The pain in his scar wasn't quite what it would be if Voldemort was – God forbid! – standing in front of him or experiencing great emotion, but it was intensifying and had an edge that Harry had come to associate with the Dark wizard being highly excited or pleased about something.

"I think we should leave before he arrives," Molly Weasley observed tersely from her hiding place.

"We're trying, Molly." Sirius glanced towards the kitchen door, where there were low sounds of voices and activity. "If we get the Floo working, vulnerable people and non-combatants should go first ...." He began to reel off a list of names, starting with Ginny (who couldn't Apparate) and including Mrs. Weasley herself. "And I don't want any arguments about it!" he added sharply, when he was finished.

Harry seethed. He'd been pretty high on Sirius's list.

"And what if they're waiting for me at your house?" he demanded.

"I didn't say you should go to my house," Sirius snapped. "Go to Hagrid's hut – it's a long way from here and you can go straight from there to Dumbledore at Hogwarts."

"I'm not leaving – "

"Harry, if you can't take orders, you've no business becoming an Auror," Lupin's voice said curtly as he appeared in the kitchen doorway. Harry shut up in a hurry, face flaming with embarrassment, but the older man took no further notice of him. "We have the Floo working, but we think there are in-built safeguards on the network that will forcibly disconnect it again after half a dozen uses at most. Probably less, actually. So I suggest – "

He didn't have time to finish. Ron's head came up, eyes wide with alarm.

"They're about to move!"

"Dammit!" Sirius hissed. "Ginny, Harry, Colin, Aurelia – into the kitchen, _now!_ "

Ginny, for a wonder, made no arguments but wrapped her hands in folds of her robe to protect them from the broken glass and crawled across the floor. Harry hesitated but Sirius grabbed him and shoved him towards the kitchen door as well.

"Don't go to the Burrow," he heard Fred telling Ginny. "Try Aunt Ernestina's house ...."

There was the soft _whoomph_ and green flash of Floo powder, followed by Ginny's voice saying softly but clearly "Corkscrew Lane".

Colin Creevey went next, followed by Aurelia Windlethroppe, a school-friend of Harry's mother who suffered from a crippling joint disease that made it hard for her to move. She was almost in tears as she kissed Harry's cheek and ran a hand affectionately over his hair.

"Don't wait," she told him earnestly as Lupin helped her into the grate. "I know you want to stay, but remember that your parents wanted you to _live_."

Harry wondered how it could be that the exhortations of a woman he had only met a few short hours ago could have more effect on his conscience than those of Sirius or Remus. He watched her disappear up the chimney, then numbly allowed Hermione to push him into the grate too. A white-faced Florean Fortescue held out a lacquered jar of Floo powder to him.

"Good luck, Mr. Potter," he said.

Harry stared at the faces in front of him. "Remus – "

"Just go, Harry," Lupin said firmly and he gave him a small smile. "We'll be fine. Go to Dumbledore and alert him."

Harry made himself take a pinch of the powder and throw it into the cool flames licking around his feet.

"Hagrid's hut!" he said.

The green flames roared up to envelope him just as the back door leading out into the yard behind the shop exploded inwards in a hail of wood and glass.

xXx

Harry hated the Floo network; he always had. It was sooty and filthy and sometimes unpredictable, and if you didn't speak quite clearly enough it could dump you off the system in all sorts of odd places. He still hadn't forgotten his first attempt at using it, when he accidentally arrived at Borgin and Burkes in Knockturn Alley.

But totally aside from that, he hated how it made him feel. He had always been a good traveller, whether by car, train or broomstick, but the incessant swirling of Floo travel, the uncomfortable heat and impossibility of avoiding a mouthful of ashes, all combined to make him feel thoroughly queasy.

This trip was worse. Perhaps it had something to do with the jerry-rigged nature of the Floo connection, but the swirling was much more violent and the journey seemed to take a great deal longer than usual. Hagrid might live in Scotland but that shouldn't have made a difference and Harry began to be afraid that he was going to get stuck somewhere in the system. The _Daily Prophet_ had detailed just such a case only a few months ago and it had taken nearly two days to set the unfortunate victim free.

But just as he was starting to panic, the swirling slowed and the Floo coughed, shuddered ... and spat him out into a fireplace. Taken by surprise (as he often was), Harry tripped over the grate and landed on his knees -

\- right back where he had started, in Florian Fortescue's kitchen.

And from the acid-hot burning of his scar he realised that in the few minutes he had been gone, the situation in the restaurant had become much, much worse. But before he could think to move or draw his wand, the sharp tip of someone else's wand was pressed against his throat.

"Well, well!" an unfamiliar voice said, with a chuckle. "If it isn't the Potter brat after all! So glad you could join us."

xXx

His captor was Darius Rookwood, a wizard Harry had seen only once before in the company of the Minister. In the intervening couple of years he had been caught red-handed siphoning money out of Ministry coffers and his subsequent escape had landed him on Mad-Eye Moody's hit-list of potential Death Eaters. The entire family was neck-deep in Dark magic, according to Sirius, and in the opinion of the Aurors it had only been a matter of time before one of them broke cover to show his true allegiances.

Harry slowly climbed out of the fireplace and got to his feet, submitting resignedly to being patted down and having his wand removed. Then Rookwood stepped back and gestured sharply for him to walk through to the restaurant, where Harry could hear voices speaking - or one voice in particular that filled him with a mixture of fear and anger.

Not Voldemort, although he knew that the Dark wizard could not be far away. No, this languid, drawling, distantly amused voice swam up out of his memory most clearly from six years ago. It was the voice of Lucius Malfoy.

"Really, Black, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from telling me where you have hidden the boy. Do you really think you won't tell my lord when he asks you? That you won't be _grateful_ to tell him?"

"Go fuck yourself, Malfoy." Sirius's voice was oddly smothered, and when Harry walked through the kitchen door he saw why.

The remaining guests from his party, including the Weasleys, were all lined up against left-hand wall under the guard of two Death Eaters. He was relieved to see that although Arthur Weasley looked a little battered, they were all largely unharmed. Lupin, however, was spread-eagled on the floor; a third Death Eater had him pinned down with a foot in the middle of his back and was pointing a weapon at him that looked a lot like a flintlock pistol.

Harry knew better. He'd seen just such a weapon during the fracas when he was fifteen and knew it was a werewolf gun, designed to fire specially-made silver shot. The sight of it sent a chill up his back, but not as much as the sight of his godfather pinned high up on the back wall of the restaurant by an invisible hand. In the middle of the room stood Lucius Malfoy, as impeccably dressed and unruffled as ever, his arms semi-folded over his chest and his wand held lightly between the tips of his fingers just as though he wasn't slowly choking a man to death.

"Malfoy!" Rookwood said then. "Look who I've found …."

Lucius glanced over his shoulder; his pale brows went up when he saw Harry and he swivelled completely to look at him.

"My dear boy!" he exclaimed. "How good of you to join us!" He surveyed Harry for a moment and chuckled softly. "Why, Mr. Potter, anyone would think you had just fallen down a chimney."

Harry could feel himself trembling slightly, but he wasn't sure if it was from fear or anger or something else. His eyes tracked helplessly to Sirius for a moment, then went back to Malfoy's face. He found his courage and his voice, although neither were as steady as he would have liked.

"Your friend took my wand from me, Mr. Malfoy," he said, "or I would have cleaned myself up. Sorry about that."

An amused smile graced the older man's face. "You always did have manners, Harry," he remarked. "Not quite of the standard I would expect from my own son, of course, but I suppose it would be unfair to be so exacting with one of your lesser parentage and upbringing."

Harry twitched but managed to contain himself. It was a petty insult. It meant nothing.

"Would you - " His voice cracked and he had to stop. _Control, damn it_ …. He tried again. "Would you please let Sirius down now?"

"Let - ? Ah!" Malfoy glanced casually at Sirius, whose gasps for breath were growing more and more desperate. "Not very ornamental, is he? I suppose he might as well come down, he's of no use to us up there now."

He flicked his wand upwards and Sirius slid to the floor with a bone-jarring thump. For a moment or two all that could be heard were his ragged gasps for breath, then he steadied and his eyes turned to Lucius with a look in them that Harry hadn't seen since the capture of Peter Pettigrew.

Malfoy smiled at this, meeting the other man's eyes without concern. "We mustn't cause you too much harm, must we, Black?"

"Mustn't we?" Sirius rasped back bitterly.

"Oh no! My lord is almost as eager to meet you and your pet werewolf as he is to take delivery of your godson. I believe he has a special treat planned for those who deprived him of his cherished Nagini's company."

"I helped kill the snake too," Harry put in quietly.

Lucius raised a brow at him. "My dear boy, what _is_ Dumbledore teaching at Hogwarts these days? Nagini was no mere snake."

"A _naga,_ " Lupin said hoarsely from a few feet away. "A snake but not a snake - the mind of a woman in a body of scales."

"Perhaps Dumbledore should have hired _you_ to teach Magical Creatures," Malfoy remarked. "You would hardly be the first untamed beast he has hired for the role, to be sure. One wonders how the pupils survive long enough to sit their examinations."

"The flesh of children has little flavour for me," Lupin replied. He looked up from under his silvering hair and something not quite human stared out at Malfoy. "Men are a tastier meal - the purer the blood, the better."

"If that was a threat, Lupin, you need practice," Malfoy returned disdainfully. "Did I mention my lord's research into werewolf metabolism? Most specifically, the possibility of triggering the change at times other than the full moon. I believe he looks forward to having a new test subject."

Harry made an uncontrollable movement that brought Rookwood's wand back up under his ear. But Malfoy was watching his face, smiling.

"Of course, Lupin here was one of your late father's friends, wasn't he?" he said softly. "What an odd assortment of misfits they were too! The Black sheep there … the wild animal … and my lord's late, unlamented servant Wormtail. Just how _did_ he die, by the way?"

Harry felt the little blood remaining in his face drain away. "He took poison," he managed after a moment, staring into Malfoy's pale, knowing eyes. "He committed suicide."

"Did he, now?" Malfoy's smile grew. "Personally I wouldn't have thought he had the nerve for it, but no doubt you know best, my boy. You _were_ his last visitor before his timely demise, after all - were you not?"

Harry couldn't speak. No one knew about that, _no one_. He'd never been questioned about that last conversation with Pettigrew, and everyone had just seemed to assume -

Something in the confrontation seemed to unlock the paralysis that held the rest of the guests, and Molly Weasley swelled with wrath in spite of Arthur's frantic attempts to silence her.

"You filthy mongrel!" she snapped at Malfoy. "How dare you - Harry had nothing to do with that business, do you hear me, nothing!"

"Molly - !"

"Mrs. Weasley, please don't - "

"My good woman, if you cannot hold your tongue, I shall be forced to silence you myself," Malfoy drawled, eyeing her with distaste.

Her eyes snapped with rage. "You don't frighten me, Lucius Malfoy! You're good for nothing but bullying children and - "

"Shall we test that hypothesis on one of your own?"

His wand flicked out and suddenly Fred Weasley was jerked away from the wall. He landed on his knees with a yelp in front of Malfoy, but had no time to recover. Another flick of the wand and he gasped - his face turned red with the effort to draw a breath and his eyes bulged. Mrs. Weasley gave a wordless cry of protest.

Harry's stomach flipped. "Let him go," he said desperately. "Please, Mr. Malfoy, let him go!"

"Not quite the note I'm looking for," Malfoy said. His eyes never left Molly Weasley's stricken face; he was smiling unpleasantly. "Beg me for him, Harry. Is he worth your pride? Are any of them?"

"I _am_ begging you - "

"Not yet, my boy. You see, this was exactly your father's problem - too much stiff-necked pride to bend the knee before his betters and admit he was the lesser wizard. Are you man enough to learn from his mistake?"

Fred was turning an unnatural scarlet. He collapsed to the floor, writhing, and his twin, helpless to do anything, let out a stricken moan that twisted Harry's soul.

"You're going to rot in hell, Malfoy," Sirius grated, the venom in his voice palpable. "You're a stranger to human decency, aren't you? No more life or soul in your body than a damned filthy Dementor - "

"As to that, I'm sure you are the expert, Black. Though I daresay a little more study of the subject wouldn't come amiss. Well, Harry? I shouldn't think your young friend here has much life left in him."

"I don't understand," Harry said helplessly. "I'm begging you to let him go - what more do you want?"

Malfoy sighed theatrically. "On your knees, Harry. Supplicants customarily approach a greater power on their knees when they beg for favours."

Less than four years previously Harry had refused to bow to Voldemort himself, much less grovel. But the life at stake then had been his own and no one else's. In the face of Fred's torment, he dropped to his knees without hesitation and stared up into Lucius Malfoy's coldly amused eyes.

"Please, Mr. Malfoy - let Fred go."

"I know all about him and his tiresome double there, you know," Malfoy said in a mock-confidential tone. "I know _exactly_ what they put my son through at school, to the last inch. And frankly, Harry, I don't feel very generous today."

The breath was rattling in Fred's throat.

"Please," Harry whispered. Cold sweat was trickling down the neck of his robes; his voice shook like a child's but he didn't care. _"Please_ …."

Malfoy smiled slowly. "Since you ask so _nicely_ ," he whispered back, and the wand flicked up.

For a long moment there was silence and Harry squeezed his eyes shut, sure that it was too late for Fred. But then the redhead drew in a long, harsh breath and began to cough. The relief was so intense that Harry actually slumped forward onto one hand. He wasn't the only one to sag with the release of tension; Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were leaning against each other, ashen faced, and George was being held up by Percy and Ron.

"Excellent," Lucius said languidly. "You see how simple things can be when you are reasonable, dear boy? Now, do stand up and compose yourself a little. Enjoyable as this gathering is, we don't want to be late for the main event, do we? There is someone who is waiting _most_ impatiently to further his acquaintance with you."

It took two attempts for Harry to drag himself to his feet and he felt almost as weak and shaky as he had after a stiff bout of 'flu he'd suffered earlier in the year. Malfoy watched and tutted lightly as he tried futilely to brush himself down.

"I do hope those robes weren't new …. Although one would have to question the sanity of the person who suggested that claret and silver were suitable colours for you in the first place. Your godfather, no doubt - " he slanted a look at the still-seated Sirius. "He had diabolical taste himself when he was your age and I don't suppose the spell in Azkaban improved him."

"Sticks and stones, Malfoy," Sirius said. "Remember that saying?"

"A Mugglish fantasy, Black. The word _crucify_ , for example, can hurt quite a lot."

There was no answer to that. Satisfied that he had silenced Sirius at least temporarily, Malfoy turned to his two masked colleagues who were guarding the other guests.

"No doubt our master will wish to decide the fate of our friends here in due course," he remarked, "but in the meantime we don't want them to get ideas, do we? Knock them all out – _properly_ , Rabastan. If any of them escape it will be on your head, not mine, I assure you."

That earned him a black look from one of the Death Eaters, but the two of them began to Stupefy the guests one by one and bind them up securely. Harry tried to find some consolation in this even as he watched them dropping to the floor. They weren't dead yet. That was something.

It was cold comfort.

Finally, when that was done Lucius turned back to the three who were still awake.

"Do get up, Black," he languidly, but there was a new note in his voice, a new hardness. "And strive to bear in mind that the three of you will be guarantors for each other's safety. Step out of line and I shall hurt Lupin first. Keep stepping out of line and your precious godson will suffer."

"You wouldn't dare touch Harry," Lupin said curtly from where he still lay upon the floor. "What would your _master_ do to you?"

"Surprisingly little, provided the boy still lives, breathes and walks," Malfoy replied, unconcerned. "That leaves quite a lot of room for manoeuvring, wouldn't you agree? Let him up, Aston, but have a care – one should never underestimate such halflings."

Something cold and sickening was settling in Harry's stomach as he watched Sirius and Remus. Their expressions – the set of Sirius's jaw, the look in Lupin's eyes – were not comforting.

"No rash impulses, gentlemen," Lucius said, apparently mirroring Harry's own train of thought. "My friend Rookwood is faster than you might think. Young Harry will thank you for your restraint."

"Will he?" Lupin asked coldly.

Lucius eyed him, clearly amused. "What are we to make of that, Harry?" he asked archly. "Had it ever occurred to you that your father's friends might rather see you dead at their own hands than in my lord's care?"

It was impossible to judge Remus's feelings, the familiar amber eyes were shuttered, but the tight lines around Sirius's mouth were more revealing and the cold sensation in Harry's stomach grew.

"I trust them to do whatever they think is right." To his mortification, his voice cracked a little on the last word.

"I wonder. After all, these are the men whose rash actions and lack of interest in you led to you being left with your Muggle relatives when you were a child." Malfoy's tone was dry. "I know somewhat more of your upbringing than you might think, Harry. Whatever you think of me, I would not have suffered a dog to live so, let alone a wizard child. Such is the quality of their friendship, I suppose."

Sirius went completely white.

"That wasn't Sirius's fault!" Harry snapped back at Malfoy, stricken by his godfather's expression.

"Of course it was, you little fool! He was so hell-bent upon his self-indulgent revenge that he gladly handed you over to the first person who offered to take care of you in his stead! No doubt you think _he did what he thought right_ , but why, my poor innocent, would a man of twenty-two and of fixed bachelor habits wish to be saddled with a year-old child of no blood connection?"

Harry's hands curled up into fists inside the sleeves of his robe. Something – he couldn't tell if it was fear, grief or anger – was making his head thump, almost drowning out the persistent, increasing pain of his scar.

"It doesn't matter," he managed after a struggle. "It wasn't his fault that he was put in that position – it wasn't _Sirius_ who murdered my mum and dad. Voldemort did that."

For a moment he and Lucius Malfoy glared at each other; Harry's eyes burned but he would not let Malfoy see him break down, he _would not,_ and the older man's vicious grey eyes narrowed, his lips twisting in a sneer.

"Gryffindor loyalty to the last!" he mocked softly. "How ... edifying. But I have seen its like before and watched it shatter. Enough! My lord awaits us. Let us see how your mindless nobility will fair before him, shall we?"

xXx

Diagon Alley was lit up like daylight when they stepped out of the restaurant. Balls of witchlight hung eerily in the air above their heads and reflected back off a strange, dome-like shield that enclosed the section of the Alley around the dozen nearest shops. It was semi-opaque and golden; beyond it vague, human shapes could be seen moving, but little more than that.

Lupin saw him looking up at it and - teacher to the last - said calmly, "It's a Ring Wall, Harry. A very advanced form of shielding ward sometimes used to enclose two duelling wizards to prevent interference from outside or, more rarely, to protect spectators from accidental harm. It isn't taught these days because it takes an unusually strong wizard to cast and hold it."

"Very good," a high, clear voice applauded.

An odd sensation came over Harry then, something akin to how he imagined it would feel if a large spider walked delicately up his back. He recognised that voice only too well. He didn't want to look, had never wanted to look at anything less, but this confrontation could not be avoided. Reluctantly he turned to face the speaker.

The tall, thin figure standing alone in the centre of the enclosed space was dressed in a rich black velvet robe, close-fitting and with a small upstanding collar. Somehow Harry had expected something more dramatic, but in its own way this was more alarming. Lord Voldemort did not seek to hide his deformities: No loose folds to disguise his skeletal limbs, no muted colours to detract from the pallor of his scaled skin, no hood to cover the near-naked head with its wisps of pitifully thin hair. And no embellishments or decoration. He presented himself as he was, and it was enough.

Harry thought of the remnant of Tom Riddle captured in Ginny Weasley's diary, but for the life of him could see no hint of that handsome, dark-haired youth in this red-eyed nightmare. He wondered if the Dark Lord's most devoted followers would eventually become something like this … if they lived long enough in his service. Was this the ambition of Lucius Malfoy, who even now was a bare step behind him, one elegant hand gripping his shoulder?

"Very good," Voldemort repeated and he smiled liplessly at Lupin, although it was hard to tell if it reached those alien eyes. "I had expected as much of you. Your intelligence was noted long since. You could teach again, werewolf, would you but reconsider your position."

"You _insult_ my intelligence with such an offer," Lupin retorted coldly. "I fear I must decline."

"Hm. Prideful. Well, we shall see." The Dark wizard gave a theatrical little shrug and turned away from him. His gaze moved to Sirius and the smile slid away.

"Going to make me an offer too?" Sirius asked. His tone was impudent, but his eyes were contemptuous.

"You have nothing that could possibly interest me, Black. I make no bargains with those of no use to me."

"Pity." Sirius sighed mockingly. "I was rather looking forward to saying no to you."

"As to that, I'm sure something can be arranged." The cold voice turned venomous. "Trust me, your name has been on my dance card for some time now. Do not be too impatient for your turn!"

"You don't want to dance with me," Sirius retorted. "I tread on everyone's toes."

This was too much for Harry. He knew what Sirius was trying to do, but he couldn't bear that he should draw Voldemort's fire in some futile attempt to save his godson. But before he could gather himself enough to speak, the Dark wizard was already gliding forward. One thin hand lashed out - Sirius recoiled, but the spindly fingers had stopped just short of his face.

Voldemort laughed.

"So much for the courage of Sirius Black!" he crowed. "Now hold your tongue, mutt, or I'll have you muzzled."

With that, he whipped about and strode back to his original position in the centre of the street.

 _Centre stage,_ an oddly familiar voice said unexpectedly in the back of Harry's mind. _The consummate performer, do you see? He lacks only a spotlight upon him – but all eyes are drawn to him in any case._

"Their wands, Lucius?" Malfoy made a tiny gesture and Sirius and Lupin's wands floated through the air to the Dark wizard. He inspected them briefly and slipped them into his right sleeve without comment. "And the boy's?"

"Rookwood?"

Harry's captor was quick to step forward and offer the slim length of wood to his master. Voldemort held it up to the light musingly for a moment.

"Ah yes – I remember it well. I think a little caution is merited on this occasion ...." And he tucked it away inside the breast of his robe.

Harry felt his stomach dip as his wand disappeared from sight –

 _The wizard is more than the wand, Harry._

Too late to wonder what _that_ meant; satisfied that Harry's wand was safely disposed of, Voldemort's attention turned at last to its owner. Malfoy released Harry's shoulder then and gave him a push forward.

For a moment or two they stared at each other, Harry pinned under the older wizard's eyes like a bird in front of the snake Voldemort resembled. Then the Dark wizard smiled paternally and threw his arms wide.

"Harry, my dear boy! Happy birthday."

Harry couldn't have responded to this if he'd wanted to. He stared back at Voldemort, eyes wide, and wondered what the hell he meant by it.

xXx

"Most remiss of me," Voldemort said, still in that affectionate, somewhat avuncular tone. "Belated wishes ... no gift. And you a young man of eighteen now! Why, it hardly seems possible."

"No thanks to you," Sirius remarked in the background, but the Dark wizard ignored him.

"It would be unforgivable to let the occasion go unmarked," he continued. "Something of suitable value – perhaps the choice should be yours. Eh, Harry? What would you like?"

There was only one answer to that, but Harry knew this was the merest cat-and-mouse game to the older wizard. He was meant to say the words as scripted, to feed his opponent his lines so that he could make his planned speech just the way he wanted –

 _So feed him his cue. Let him talk._

Again he had to swallow more than once before he could find a voice. "Let the others go, please."

"Ah!" Voldemort folded his hands before him. "Yes, I rather thought you might ask that. But surely, my young friend, there is something more fundamental you should be asking for? Birthdays are traditionally times for the old to dispense wisdom to the young, so let me offer a small morsel of advice, Harry: Nobility is for old men, not youths with their lives before them. Forget your friends for a moment. Their fate has nothing to do with you."

"I – I suppose you want me to beg for _my_ life," Harry replied unsteadily. "The same way Malfoy made me beg for Fred's. You want me to get down on my knees – "

"Did you, Lucius?" For a moment Voldemort looked amused. "How perverse of you! No, no, my boy, no grovelling or humiliation. All you have to do is ... ask."

Harry stared at him. "Ask?"

"Yes – that's all. Ask and it shall be granted."

 _Just like that?_ the voice in his head whispered.

"What do you want in return?" he asked finally.

Voldemort smiled. "The pleasure of your company from here onwards."

"No," Harry said at once. The very notion made his skin crawl, even though he didn't know precisely what the Dark wizard meant.

"Not even in return for your friends' lives and freedom?"

That gave him a pause – and before he could stop himself, his head twitched around to look at Sirius and Lupin.

"Yes," Voldemort almost purred. "I might even be persuaded to release _them_ if you came to me willingly."

 _Why would he say that when he has you already?_

"No, Harry," Lupin said, quietly but very firmly. "Not for any of us."

Sirius's eyes, darker and more haunted than they had ever been since his escape from Azkaban, fastened onto his face; he was shaking his head, mouthing the word "no".

 _Listen to him, Harry, he loves you like a son and would never lead you falsely._

Harry turned back to Voldemort, staring at the lizard face mistrustfully. "What's so important about me going with you willingly?"

"You don't ask the right questions, my boy. Shouldn't you be asking why I want you at all? Especially alive?"

"All right then. Why do you want me alive now, when you've been trying to kill me since I was a baby?"

"All men grow old, Harry. Age defeats even the greatest of wizards – "

"I thought you were trying to live forever," Harry interrupted before he could stop himself.

"A noble goal, you must admit," Voldemort conceded. "One I fully intend to achieve in due course. But in many respects I am no different from any other man. I too hanker for an heir ... someone to pass my gifts to, to raise as a son of my house. A child of my spirit, if not of my actual flesh."

He paused for a moment and Harry tried to think of an inoffensive way to ask him why he didn't simply breed like everyone else, but his stomach was doing back-flips at the very thought.

"Having children can be a risky business, you know, Harry – What am I saying? Of course you don't know, you're barely out of childhood. One gives them life, raises them, teaches them, but offspring are a lottery, be you never so careful in your choice of mate. One never knows where a weakness will surface. Better, then, to select a suitable heir from elsewhere – pluck a promising child from the morass of ill-suited parents and set its feet upon the right path."

Harry was having a hard time crediting his ears. "Are you saying you want to _adopt_ me?"

"Exactly." Voldemort paused for a moment, but when it was clear Harry had been rendered speechless by this, he continued. "It occurs to me, dear boy, that a talented young man like yourself, a promising, gifted wizard with no family ties, would benefit immeasurably from my ... patronage. Consider for a moment: I have power and position and the means to give you the same, not to mention educational possibilities you can scarcely imagine. Your time at Hogwarts has ill prepared you, Harry. You have been hemmed in and handicapped by the timid, outdated notions of your government and the desire of men like Dumbledore to control you through your lack of knowledge. I can teach you the true meaning of magic."

"You can teach him to be a Death Eater, you mean," Sirius snapped.

"You are shallow and unimaginative, Black, and your jealousy of your godson does you no credit," the Dark wizard stated coldly.

 _"Jealousy?"_

"He will be a more powerful wizard that you can imagine, let alone ever be yourself. And like Dumbledore you would prefer to hobble him with ignorance and half-truths rather than see him reach his true potential."

"Perhaps you're right," Lupin said coolly into the charged atmosphere. "Harry's still young, after all. Those of us who know him know that the surface of his potential has barely been scratched. But all he can learn from you is black magic, and I would rather see him clean and ignorant than rotted from the inside out with that kind of foulness."

"Ignorant," Voldemort said, unmoved. "Ignorant and unimaginative. You fear what you cannot possibly know or understand."

"I don't want your kind of understanding," Lupin retorted. "I may be an animal once a month, but I at least can still hold my head up in wizard society. But this isn't my decision to make." And his eyes went to Harry.

 _He won't free your friends, no matter what you say. He could have let your mother go free, could have simply Stunned her, but no - the Killing Curse is a toy to him, that he uses like a child swatting ants._

 _And he didn't answer your question, Harry._

A lot of powerful, subversive magic involved consent; the subtle willingness, no matter how slight, of the subject to give way to the caster. The Imperius Curse worked on exactly that principle, latching onto the victim's weaker personality, exploiting some hidden willingness to be dominated.

All Harry had to do was agree to go with Voldemort willingly and it would all be over. Forever.

 _Time to be proactive, Harry._

And with those words, whispered softly in that so-familiar yet unrecognised voice at the back of his mind, something extraordinary began to build inside him, starting in the middle of his chest and welling outwards to the tip of every extremity, until his entire body tingled.

"What do you say, Harry?" Voldemort coaxed.

Harry stared at him, repulsed.

"When you killed my parents?" he demanded. "No way! You can go to hell." The tingling sensation surged and without even thinking about it, Harry said firmly _"Accio wand!"_

And a wand leapt from Voldemort's sleeve directly into his right hand.

xXx

He knew as soon as the handle smacked into his palm that it was Sirius's wand. He had never touched it before in his life, had never even taken especial notice of it, but the smooth wood - oak, twelve inches, with a core of unicorn tail hair - whispered against his skin like the touch of thick black fur and the power in it, wild and unfamiliar, sent a jolt to his elbow.

The others were given only a split second to gape, astounded, at what he had done. Operating on an impulse he didn't fully understand, Harry turned and snapped _"Stupefy!"._

Lucius Malfoy dropped like a stone.

A grunt and a curse, and suddenly Lupin was struggling with Aston for possession of the werewolf gun; Sirius was already wresting Rookwood's wand from him by dint of repeatedly punching the Death Eater in the face.

Harry registered this in a blink, then he was whipping back to point the wand directly at Voldemort.

Who was armed and waiting for him.

"Stalemate," the Dark wizard hissed and he smiled. "What now, Harry?"

Wand-tip to wand-tip they faced off against each other. Harry could feel himself trembling in spite of the weird energy that was pulsing through his body. He had been here before and only the fact that his own wand was the twin of Voldemort's had saved him. He knew that, new energy or no, he couldn't hope to face down the Dark Lord and win, and that knowledge was in Voldemort's red, cat-pupilled eyes as his lips curved triumphantly.

Then there was a sudden loud bang from behind Harry, followed by the most extraordinary _clang,_ as though the world's biggest brass bowl had been dropped onto the cobbles from a great height. Voldemort's eyes flicked away from his for a second -

 _MOVE!_

Harry didn't question the command; he threw himself to his left, stumbling and nearly falling on the uneven surface of the street. The Ring Wall had vanished and suddenly the Alley was full of shouting people in buff Aurors' robes; Voldemort shrieked in rage and Harry knew, just knew, that he wasn't going to get away in time ….

Time slowed.

He didn't even hear the curse as Voldemort shouted it. He saw the thin lips move, the wand tracking him as he tried to escape, and tried to put on a burst of speed -

Green light leapt from the tip of the Dark wizard's wand and Harry threw up his arm in a futile blocking motion.

He heard it, a sound like rushing wind from the darkest depths of his infant nightmares.

He felt it strike, an emerald-green and blinding flash.

He felt himself hit the ground.

There was an unearthly scream of rage and pain, a cacophony of shouts and cries and conflicting orders being given, and the hammer of approaching feet -

 _That isn't right,_ he thought dizzily, staring up into the sparkling green corona that was all he could see. _Should I be hearing things if I'm dead?_

 _No, but then you're not actually dead,_ the voice at the back of his head said.

Someone was bending over him, visible even through the weird visual effects, a familiar-yet-unfamiliar figure who looked down at him and smiled.

 _Happy birthday, Harry,_ the figure said. _I love you._

Whoever it was bent closer and Harry felt the momentary brush of lips across his forehead … then the mystery person was gone .

xXx

There was no time for Harry to register the loss. Suddenly there was a deafening babble and hands were seizing him; a multitude of voices were crying his name and weeping.

"Ow!" he protested weakly and tried to push the nearest set of clutching fingers away.

The stunned silence that followed this was almost as painful as the noise in its own way. Harry blinked, wishing that his eyes weren't still full of acid-green sparkles. It was impossible to tell who was there.

"Sirius?" he asked uncertainly. "Remus? I … . Look, I can't see you, can someone please say something?"

 _"He's ALIVE!"_ somebody shrieked.

The uproar this caused was incredible - cries of relief and amazement rebounded off the walls of the narrow Alley as the words were taken up and passed through what sounded like a sizeable crowd. Harry was seized again, hugged and squeezed until he had no breath left to protest. It came as an enormous relief when a gentler pair of hands slapped the others away and helped him to sit up properly.

"Get him up and get his robe off him, you fools!" Lupin's voice was saying urgently. "Quickly!"

Harry felt himself swiftly hoisted up off the ground and before he could ask what was happening the many hands were stripping his robe from him, yanking his arms painfully in their haste. The babble increased as people demanded to know what was going on.

"My God." That was Sirius, very close to Harry's left ear, and his voice was shaking. "My God … it hit his _robe._ Look at that!"

"Look at _what?_ " Harry demanded, frustrated. "Please - I can't see!"

"You've got a burn right through the side of your robe, Harry," Lupin told him. He sounded shaken too. "The curse just _barely_ missed you. In fact …." There were rustling noises for a moment. "Dear God - I think the silver lining might have deflected the curse when you raised your arm. I didn't think that was possible. The whole robe - no, leave it where it is, Arthur! - it's saturated with curse residue."

Harry was having difficulty processing any of this. "Why can't I see? All I've got are dots in front of my eyes."

"It was probably the flash from the curse," Sirius said. He was trying to sound reassuring, but his voice had that note of false firmness in it that Harry associated with those occasions when people wanted to sound more confident than they really were. "We'll get a mediwizard here as soon as we can."

"Is everyone okay? What got rid of that shield thing?"

"Everyone else is fine," Lupin said firmly.

A robe was draped around Harry's shoulders; he wasn't cold, but didn't argue. It smelled like Sirius and his familiar spicy-pine scent was oddly comforting. "And the shield?"

"Remus fired the werewolf gun at it," Sirius said. "It shattered the Ring Wall and let Moody and the others in - "

"I think it only worked because Voldemort was distracted," Lupin interjected. He, like Sirius, was trying to sound confident but Harry heard the quiver in his voice. "We got lucky …. I'm proud of you, Harry. Taking out Malfoy instead of trying to tackle Voldemort was _exactly_ the right thing to do. The others were useless without him to look to. Moody will be very pleased to get his hands on him."

"When he gets over the disappointment of losing Voldemort," Sirius added.

"What happened to him?" Harry demanded, suddenly realising that no one had said anything about the Dark wizard.

"Gone," Lupin said succinctly. "He Apparated out of here as soon as he saw … saw our reinforcements."

Harry didn't miss the tiny hesitation. "When he thought I was dead, you mean."

"Well, I don't know about that. I think he would know if you were really dead."

"Why?"

"Wouldn't you know if _he_ was dead?" Sirius asked.

"I don't know."

There was a pause.

"I've got your wand," Harry said to Sirius suddenly, remembering. "I - Oh damn! He has my wand and Remus's."

"Wands can be replaced," Lupin said and suddenly his calm facade cracked completely. " _You_ can't, Harry! We'll - "

Harry never found out what he was about to say, though, for at that moment a familiar harsh voice bellowed, _"All right! Which of you imbeciles let our scaly friend escape?"_

xXx

The house at Godric's Hollow had never been so busy, but Harry was allowed to sit in relative peace on the sofa in the library while most of the inquest into the evening was conducted in the living room. His eyes were bandaged; the mediwizard who examined him confirmed that it was only the after-effects of the flash from the curse and put drops into his eyes that left Harry with a not unpleasant sensation of fizzing under the lids. All being well he would be able to take the bandage off the next day, but he had been sternly told to rest in the meantime. Well, he was trying to at any rate.

The aftermath of the incident had been … stressful. Mad-Eye Moody had wanted to interrogate him for every scrap of useful (and not so useful) information that could be wrung from his experience. Everyone from his party seemed to want to see and touch him, to reassure themselves that he really was alive and well. On top of that there had been an embarrassing encounter with Fred and George; Fred wanted to thank him for saving his life, which Harry found hard to take seeing as Fred wouldn't have been in danger in the first place if he hadn't been at Harry's ill-fated party. Hermione and Mrs. Weasley both wanted to cry over him, which made him feel even more uncomfortable, and people like Percy came to solemnly shake his hand until it began to feel like it might fall off at the wrist.

Harry couldn't decide if it was all worse because he couldn't see anything, but he had certainly been grateful when Sirius finally pushed his well-wishers out of the room with an exhortation to let him rest. The only thing he regretted was that he hadn't had a chance to do more than exchange a quick _You okay?_ with Ron, which didn't even begin to soothe his anxieties about his friend.

A click from the door made him turn his head. "Hello?"

"It's me," a familiar voice said and the sofa cushions dipped beside him as Ron sat down.

Harry felt a surge of relief. "Just you? It's really hard to tell what's going on with my eyes like this."

"Yeah, just me. Are you all right, mate?"

"Yeah - in fact, I'm feeling pretty good all things considered. I really thought I was going to die," Harry admitted.

"Well take heart – for a couple of minutes we all thought you _were_ dead." Ron's voice wobbled and Harry could hear him swallowing. "You were so still …. And even now - Harry, how can you be so _calm?"_

"I'm not, believe me," Harry told him. "I was scared shitless when it was happening and I think part of me still is." He found it hard to believe that he'd survived Voldemort again.

There was a pause and Ron said softly, "You must have nine lives or something, mate." He put a cold glass into Harry's hand. "Here - it's a shot from Sirius's special stash. Since you're old enough to drink it now, he thought you might appreciate it. Don't knock it back too quickly or we'll be picking you up off the floor."

"Thanks - I think." Harry didn't taste the drink though. "Has Moody forgiven me yet?"

" _You're_ not the one in his black books," Ron told him. "Sirius and Remus got all the blame for Voldemort's escape."

"But they didn't have wands!"

"Moody thinks Remus should have fired the werewolf gun at Voldemort, not at that shield thing."

"Would that have worked?"

"God knows. Oh, speaking of wands …." Ron put something slender and wooden into Harry's free hand.

"My wand!" It was odd how it was possible to recognise a wand just by touch.

"The Aurors found it in the street when we left," Ron explained. "Remus's too."

"But how? Voldemort had mine inside his robe ...."

"Sirius thinks that maybe when you summoned his wand the others came too, but just didn't reach you. You were pretty bloody lucky that his did." There was a pause. "How did you do that anyway?"

"I don't know, exactly," Harry said. "I … I just felt like I could and I _did._ " He paused, remembering the voice in his head, the sensation of power … the touch of lips on his forehead. He ran his fingers nervously over his wand for a moment. "There was a lot of really _weird_ stuff going on, Ron."

"Weird in what way?"

"I - I don't …." Harry swallowed. "Are you sure there's no one else here?"

"Of course – hang on, let me shut the door."

Harry felt him get up, heard his footsteps moving away and the faint click of the door. It was surprisingly difficult to make a picture of it in his mind and he wondered how on earth people adjusted to being blind. This was driving him nuts.

Then Ron returned, flopping back onto the sofa. "Okay, we're definitely alone. Tell me."

Harry licked his lips nervously. "Look, this is going to sound really stupid, but … all the time I was standing in front of Voldemort, I could hear someone talking to me."

"Who? And talking to you how?"

"I don't know – it was like a voice in the back of my head."

"It wasn't just you - you know, an internal dialogue sort of thing?"

"No, it was definitely someone else."

Ron seemed to think about this for a while. "Did you recognise them?" he asked finally.

"Not … exactly."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, I _thought_ I recognised them, but ...."

"Who do you think it was?"

Harry felt desperately uncomfortable admitting to any of this. He remembered that Ron had once told him that hearing voices wasn't a good thing, even for wizards. "It's really stupid because I know it couldn't be him."

"Why?"

"It …." He stopped, took a breath. "I thought it was my dad." When the silence that followed this grew too uncomfortable to bear, he added, "And I know that's impossible - "

"Not necessarily," Ron said, cutting him off.

"Eh? What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Harry demanded. "My dad is dead, Ron!"

"I know! But everything doesn't just stop because your body dies, Harry. You know that."

"But - "

"No, listen to me - it would make a kind of sense, okay? At certain times of the year, the dead are closer to us. The solstices, for example. The anniversary of their death and other meaningful dates. It's …." Harry heard the redhead sigh. "Look, I'm not much of a clairvoyant, but I know it's not impossible to make contact with the dead and certain times are better for it than others. If I wanted to make contact with my granddad, for example, the best time to do it would be on Christmas Day because that's the day he died."

Harry felt an irrational spurt of anger. "So, what - you're saying that today just happened to be a really good day for it, so my father decided to drop by?"

"Actually, that _is_ what I'm trying to say," Ron said. He sounded tired. "After all, why not? Harry, it's your birthday. More to the point, it's your _eighteenth_ birthday. It's an important event, the day you stop being a kid and start becoming an adult wizard. And under normal circumstances your mum and dad would have been here for it. Is it such a stretch to believe that they're thinking of you? They _died_ so that you could be here today."

"It's not the same thing, Ron." Oh God, but he didn't want to have this conversation after all. It was too much to deal with after the trauma of confronting Voldemort. "There's a big difference between that and … and one of them actually talking to me and helping me."

"It would explain the Summoning Spell, though. I mean, we both know it's not impossible to do wandless magic, but it's really difficult and dangerous and summoning _anything_ takes willpower even with a wand. But the dead – well, they can do things. And parents have such a strong connection with their children. When you consider how your dad died, Harry, then him being there at that moment, giving you the boost you needed to save yourself ... well, it makes perfect sense to me."

There was a long pause then, and after a while Harry remembered the glass in his hand and took a swallow from it. The firewhiskey slipped down his throat like fine silk and erupted in his belly like a volcano. Absurdly, all that did was make him feel more like crying.

"I saw him," he said, when he could find a voice around emotion and alcohol vapour. "I was lying there in the street and I saw him, just for a moment. He said he loved me."

The sofa dipped abruptly and Harry was enveloped in a rough, warm, Ron-scented hug.

"Well, of course he did, you idiot. We all love you, don't you get that yet?"


	9. Epilogue: Sunday 2nd August

"Good thing I don't really have much stuff," Harry remarked, as he dumped the last of his boxes on the floor of his new room at the student house.

"Isn't there something bigger than this?" Sirius was lounging against the wall and staring around at Harry's new bedroom, perplexed. "Nice friends you have – taking advantage of you not being here to pinch all the good rooms."

"We didn't!" Hermione protested from the doorway. "There's a much bigger room next door, but he insisted on having this poky little cupboard instead!"

Harry flushed under his godfather's quizzical eyes. "I _told_ you already – I lived in a cupboard for years. Small is safe as far as I'm concerned. Don't look like that, Sirius! It's not like you personally handed me over to Aunt Petunia and said "Here, make sure you keep him locked up good and proper under the stairs"."

"It _feels_ like I did."

"Isn't that a bit like accusing Remus of personally throwing you into Azkaban and tossing away the key?"

"Is it me or is there a lot of baggage in this room?" Hermione remarked tartly. "I'll come back when you've both finished your angst party, shall I?" She tutted under her breath and stalked off.

The two men looked at each other.

"She's going to drive me nuts," Harry confided.

"One way or another," Sirius agreed, giving him a crooked little grin. "Really, it's no mystery to me why you want to move in here. It's not like you can get up to any high jinks with two old men in the way, and with a good-looking girl like that just down the passage ...."

"Two old men – yeah, right!" Harry snorted, refusing to dignify the Hermione remark with his notice. "Mr. I-Was-Nearly-Late-For-My-Portkey-Because-I-Couldn't-Get-My-Jeans-Zipped-Fast-Enough."

"Hey!" But Sirius couldn't suppress a smug grin. "There's life in the old dog yet."

"Yeah, I noticed!"

Harry looked at the older man and was suddenly overcome by a surge of affection for him. His father's words, uttered at an extreme moment, came back to him: _He loves you like a son._ For a second he dithered, then he dumped the handful of books he was holding and quickly crossed the room before he could change his mind.

"Hey, what's this for?" But Sirius was quick to return the sudden, fierce hug. "Harry?"

"Just ... thanks, Sirius. Mum and Dad knew what they were doing – you're a really good godfather."

"I try my humble best." The words were flippant, but the look in Sirius's eyes when he released Harry wasn't. He was deeply touched. He slung an arm around his godson's shoulders and gave him another slight squeeze. "Just remember this: You may have moved in here, but my house is still your home. Your room is always there for you and so am I. Got that?"

"Got it."

"Good." Sirius released him. "Come on, let's see if we can get some of this stuff sorted out the way you want it before Hermione comes back and sorts it out for you ...."

xXx

The headline in the _Daily Prophet_ was buried on the fourth page under an advertisement for charms to cure warts and scrofulous humours. It was barely two inches high.

_GATECRASHERS SPOIL BIRTHDAY  
CELEBRATIONS OF THE BOY WHO LIVED_

 _Officials from the Magical Law Enforcement Agency this morning  
confirmed that the eighteenth birthday celebrations of Harry Potter   
were disturbed by a violent altercation with individuals unknown who   
broke through substantial privacy wards to harass and intimidate the   
guests. It is believed that significant damage was inflicted upon the   
premises of popular restaurateur Florian Fortescue but it is not   
thought that there were any injuries._

 _The office of Minister Cornelius Fudge moved swiftly to squash wild  
rumours of Death Eater activity. "There is no evidence of this," said a   
spokesperson mere hours after the incident, "none whatsoever. Really,   
after all these years people should be able to hear Harry Potter's name  
without jumping to conclusions about He Who Must Not Be Named!"_


End file.
